French Onion Soup (Soupe à l'oignon)
Time flies. I can’t believe we are at the end of September! I start to see the leaves on the trees turn yellow, the weather starts to get a bit chilly and uncertain. My skin is telling me I need to start putting more moisturiser than usual. Where has the summer gone? I don’t know if I am prepared for the autumn and later for the winter. One thing for sure, I know I will miss the daylight as autumn and winter basically mean less daylight and getting dark at 3pm. 🙁
Perhaps, I shouldn’t feel so down thinking of all these. I better enjoy the sun while it’s out and when the weather is not as harsh. For those who live in the Northern Hemisphere, I wonder how you all feel when at this of the year?
Autumn for me means to eat food that can keep me warm – something hot and soupy sound nice, as always! There are abundant to offer when autumn is approaching, especially root vegetables and squashes. These are great additions to stews, which is always one of my favourites. Well, I haven’t started making stews yet, but I just started to make more soup these days.
One of my all time rustic favourites must be French Onion Soup (Soupe à l’oignon). This soup is so simple, as the name suggested, the main ingredient is onion. French onion soup is one of the all time classic of French cooking and a tradition you will see very often. In my opinion it should not be over-sophisticated.
Well, I have to share with you a secret that I don’t like to slice onion as it makes my eyes water! It wasn’t very pleasure as my eyes stung right after slicing or chopping onions. Luckily, my Magimix came to my rescue! This little robot doesn’t only grind, it slices, chops, mixes, shreds, grates and chops. It can handle quite a lot of stuff, really. 🙂 So, I left the big responsibility of onion slicing to Magimix. The result? Brilliant, it did a good job! Bravo!
If you stick to the basic French onion soup recipe below to start with and see how much you enjoy it. Simple is good!
French Onion Soup (Soupe à l'oignon)
Prep Time:
20 minutes
Cook Time:
30 minutes
Yield:
6 persons
Ingredients:
For the French Onion Soup (Soupe à l’oignon):
50g butter
700g onions, thinly sliced
2 tbsp flour
1.5l beef or chicken stock
1 glass white wine
1 bay leaf
6 baguette
100g gruyère, grated
salt
Method:
1. Melt the butter in a pot and add onions. Cook over low hear, stir them regularly. They are ready when they are soft, sticky, sweet and deep gold in colour.
2. Add flour and stir continuously for 2 minutes. Gradually blend in the stock and the wine. Stir and bring to boil. Add bay leaf and season. Cover the pan and summer for 25 minutes. Remove the bay leaf.
3. Ladle into deep, heatproof bowls, place several thin slices of toasted baguette on to each, then cover with thinly sliced Gruyère. Bake in a hot oven for 20 minutes or grill until the bread is toasted and the cheese has melted but not browned. Serve warm.
