French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup always engenders contented smiles at my house. Onions browned to the point of caramelization, beef broth flavor turned up with dry sherry and red wine. Crusty bread croutons and Gruyere cheese!

Don’t be intimidated by a soup that takes a little longer to prepare. The slow-cooking time and the attention that it takes to caramelize the onions is worth every second. Stop short of getting that requisite dark brown fond and you’ll end up with just a bland onion soup. So set aside a couple of hours of cooking time for the onions to simmer. And yes, you will need to pay attention and stir them occasionally. But the reward is well worth your effort.

Some tips:

• If you can, use three different kinds of onions. The most preferred onion is a basic yellow onion. Sweet onions can tend to make the soup a bit too sweet; red onions go pale and lose a little of their vibrant flavor. White onions are mild overall, but still flavorful. My favorite combination is mostly yellow, with red and white added into the mix.
• Slice each onion from pole to pole; think of the stem and blossom ends as the two poles and cut the onion in half from pole to pole. Continue to slice each half from pole to pole, so you are cutting for long pieces, not circular pieces. Slicing this way bursts fewer cells in each layer of the onion, and helps maintain the slices’ structural integrity in the soup. Make each slice about ¼” thick.
• Fond is the brown residue that sticks to your pot when an ingredient such as meat (or in this case, onions) sticks to the pot in the process of cooking. Don’t waste the fond, it is the key to heightened flavor in almost every dish that produces it. Caramelizing onions, which browns the onions and produces fond, has some characteristics with browning roux for gumbo. You want the fond from the onions to darken to a deep, rich golden brown.
• NOTE: When caramelizing onions, remember that they need to have time to sit at the bottom of the pan in order to brown. Constant stirring is counterproductive. Be patient and watchful about stirring. But be careful to stop short of burning!
• When serving French Onion Soup you will need crostini (toasted Italian or French bread slices). The crostini soak up that delicious broth fairly quickly, so I advise against the temptation to substitute croutons, which tend to sink into the broth. Crostini will give your Gruyere cheese a base above the soup broth so it can bubble and brown.