French Onion Soup

With the weather cooling down, it's the perfect time to start making soups, starting with one of Andrew's favourites: French onion soup.

But let's not kid ourselves; I'm not that organized. I don't have it together enough to do season-specific things like decorating or making holiday-specific food. I wish I did, but I don't. The real reason we ever have French onion soup around here is because we have bread that has gone stale a little hard and I don't want to waste it. (See? Don't have it together.)

I remember the time I discovered this quick and easy dinner idea. It was at my parents' place, my dad just tossed onions, beef stock, hard bread and cheese into little onion soup bowls, put them in the oven and a bit later, voila, French onion soup. I've made it many times using that simple recipe but this time, I thought I might change it up a bit and actually look up a recipe to see how it could be done differently. 

FRENCH ONION SOUP (adapted from Taste.com)

Ingredients

60g butter, chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

6 (1kg) brown onions, thinly sliced

2 tsp brown sugar

2 tbsp plain flour

4 cups beef stock

2 cups water

12 baguette slices, 1.5cm thick

olive oil

1 garlic clove, halved

1 cup grated Swiss cheese

Directions

1. Heat butter and oil in a heavy-based saucepan over medium-low heat until sizzling. Add onions. Cook uncovered, stirring often, for 45-50 minutes or until onions are soft. Stir in sugar and cook, stirring often, for 10 minutes or until onions caramelize. 

2. Add flour to saucepan and cook, stirring for 2 minutes. Add stock and water, reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes to allow flavours to combine.

3. Make cheesy bread. Preheat oven to 180C. Spray both sides of bread with oil. Rub both sides of bread with garlic. Arrange bread on 2 baking trays. Bake, turning once, for 10 to 12 minutes or until bread is light golden. Sprinkle cheese over 1 side of bread. Return to oven for 3 to 4 minutes or until cheese melts.

4. Ladle soup into bowls. Top with cheesy bread.

Notes

I omitted the flour. Adding flour to soup doesn't make sense to me so I don't do it.

For the cheesy bread, I used butter instead of olive oil, toasted them on one side and sprinkled Colby cheese (because that's what we had) on it and put them back in the oven to melt.