Soupe a L'oignon Au Fromage

French Onion Soup with cheese. Mmmmmm. Now that the weather's warming a bit it doesn't seem quite so apropos to blog about this. But since it was so yummy fantastic - I'm still going to!


French Onion Soup is probably my most favorite soup if you remove Chinese soups from the list. I could make a meal on a big bowl baked with that crusty Gruyère top. When Kev & Liz came over last week I started this that morning to serve as a course that night.

Chopping 6 onions def made me cry --- Threw in a bay leaf and some thyme

They key to making a great onion soup is caramelizing the onions. It can take 45 minutes to an hour to do this, but it really gives that rich onion flavor to the soup that everyone looks for. This is the recipe I used but I read through a lot of the reviews and made some adjustments because of it.

• Added some thyme, bay leaves, balsamic vinegar and sugar to the onions while they were caramelizing
• Added the garlic about halfway through the caramelizing instead of the full time
• Used red wine instead of white
• In the future would use low-sodium beef broth only instead of half chicken broth
• Added a little soup base flavoring

Perfectly caramelized onions - see those brown bits?

It was fantastic. And since this recipe made about 8 servings, it sat in the fridge for a week before I heated it and served it again... and it was EVEN better! So I might suggest making the soup a few days prior to needing it so the flavors really marinate together.

Just as good, if not better, the week after!