Make French Onion Soup at Home
This French Onion soup is a modern spin on the classic recipe in that it uses a few pantry ingredients and your biggest investment is the time it takes to cook the onions. Full of rich flavor and topped with garlic bread or plain crackers, this soup is a winner!
I was reading through one of my many vintage cookbooks recently and came across this recipe for Onion Soup Gratinee’. We love onions at my house! We especially love French Onion soup, so I read through this recipe to find out what a grantinee’ was and if this was a soup recipe I wanted to try.
The recipe didn’t explain what a gratinee’ was. So like any good modern researcher, I Googled it. In short, I learned that its a French word that loosely translates to “au gratin” (which I thought was a French word).
After a little more reading, I discovered that gratinee’ or au gratin is a cooking method that involves topping a dish with bread crumbs and cheese. If you’re really curious to learn more about it, I suggest you jump over to Google and check out the results.
Make It A Meal:
Usually a cup of French Onion Soup is served as an appetizer or part of a meal. To round out the meal, serve a salad and a pasta dish. Of course, you’ll want to top your soup with some croutons!
[bctt tweet=”French Onion soup you can make at home – don’t forget the cheese! “]
Variations:
Replace the butter with olive oil and the beef broth with vegetable broth for a vegetarian option. Toss in some garlic.
If you’re being traditional you can top this soup with a handful of shredded cheese and pop it under the broiler for a minute to melt. However, I was out of cheese (can you believe that!?!) and those pretty glass bowls I’m using are not oven safe.
You absolutely need oven safe bowls if you’re putting them under the broiler. Please for safety’s sake.
Look at those onion slices floating in the broth! Can’t you just taste the flavor?!
The original recipe was in Cooking With T-Fal, copyright 1993. I modified the original recipe slightly. The original recipe on page 53 called for vermouth and brandy. I didn’t have any wine in the house (can you believe that! – it’s definitely grocery shopping time!), so decided to try the recipe without. I didn’t notice that the soup seemed to be missing anything.
I used plain yellow onions. If you wanted to jazz up the flavor some, you could mix up the variety of onions you use – add some Vidalia, red, white and yellow all together!
About the Book:
Published to assist owners of T-Fal brand cookware use their new pots and pans, this book is 112 pages long. Its full of recipes for all meals and from several cuisines.
Table Of Contents:
Letter from T-Fal
Information – Before You Begin
Chef’s Cuisine
American Potpourri
French Cuisine
Italian Cuisine
South of the Border / Caribbean Cuisine
Asian / Pan Pacific Cuisines
Index
This recipe is very easy, I’ve always loved French Onion soup, and it’s a guarantee that I”ll order it when I’m out to dinner. My husband loved this recipe, too. In fact, I almost didn’t have enough left to take the photos for this post, he was so enthusiastic about eating it!
You’ll be able to make homemade French Onion Soup, any time by using this recipe. Just make sure you have some white, melty cheese on hand to top it with for authentic French Onion soup.
Good cheeses for melting: mozzarella, Gouda or Swiss. You can use slices or shredded cheese to top your soup.
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French Onion Soup Recipe
Ingredients:
- 5-6 Onions, thinly sliced
- 3 TB butter
- 1 tsp Olive Oil
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Sugar
- 3 TB Flour
- 8 cups Beef Broth
Recipe Directions:
- Cook onions in butter and oil over medium heat for 15 minutes.
- Stir onions, add salt & sugar. Cook 30-40 minutes on medium high heat.
- Stir in flour and remove from heat.
- Add boiling beef broth.
- Simmer 30-40 minutes.
Approximate Nutritional Information:
Servings Per Recipe: 6. Amount Per Serving: Calories: 145g, Total Fat: 2g, Cholesterol: 1mg, Sodium: 819mg, Total Carbs: 28g, Protein: 5g.
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French Onion Soup is one of my favourties. Sounds like this one is packed with flavour…yummy!! Perfect for these cold winter days.
Gloria, it’s one of our favorites too – I’ll be making it with the cheese on top next time!
If you try this recipe, stop back and let me know how it worked for you.
love this soup, never made it at home!
This looks great. What an old classic, French Onion Soup is.
Mark, Thanks for stopping by! You know what makes classics? – timeless flavors and good taste!
ps -I love Compass and Fork!!
French onion soup is my husband’s favorite soup! I love the simplicity of it. Perfect for the fall and winter season!
There’s nothing like a cup of hot soup to take the chill off on a cold damp day.
Girl, you have no wine and no cheese? This is an emergency! Get thee to the grocery STAT! Thank goodness you had enough on hand to make this delicious soup!
LOL Rachelle, you know, some how the gremlins have eaten all the cheese and drunk all the wine. It was nearly emergency status at my house!
I was just saying to my husband the other day….I need to make some French Onion Soup. I have my mom’s soup bowls….and it has been TOO long since I had a bowl of this tasty soup.
I love those old crock bowls you can put in the oven and make the cheese all melty!
So perfect for these chilly days…this soup looks delicious!
Catherine, it is delicious! If you’ve got chilly weather coming, pick up some onions when you’re at the store, you won’t be sorry.
I’ve made French Onion Soup from scratch once. It was a long process to get those onions perfect. But homemade with this soup is totally the way to go!
Joanna, I’ve seen people do caramelized onions in the slow cooker … that seems like a labor saving approach, but I haven’t tried it yet.
I have not eaten or made french onion soup in years! I must make it soon. Your recipe looks incredible. I love the color and texture you have on this. The recipe sounds awesome. Saving it for later.
Veena, let me know how you like it once you’ve made this soup. If you’re a French Onion fan, I’m sure this will work favorably.
I can thrive on soups and French onion soup is one of my fave strangely I never have attempted before. I’ll try soon
I love soups! I’ve told my husband we’re going to be those retired people who have soup and grilled cheese for lunch every day! LOL
I’ve never made French onion soup before, but I absolutely love it! I like that your version is really simple to make. I’ll definitely have to try it out
Karyl, like so many great foods – there are complicated recipes and there are simple recipes. This one is the simple style for a classic soup. After you practice on this one, you might want to try a complicated recipe… or not. LOL
French onion soup is one of my favorites! And the weather right now is PERFECT for it.
We’ve definitely got a chill in the air here, going to be eating a lot of soup this week!
Love this homemade classic, yes French onion soup is my favorite. I am glad to find an easy recipe to make it that too with lot of flavor. When weather gets cold soup is a bliss.
Swathi, you’re a girl after my own heart!