French Onion Soup

3 little words. Say them and I am yours. Here we go: French Onion Soup. I love it. Even though I went to college in France for a year, I actually never had French onion soup until a visit to Maryland. So I had to travel across the pont to discover this delicious dish from a country that I have visited more times than I can count. This is the way I prepare this meal at home. The recipe below makes two servings as a main course and 4 servings as a starter.

At a glance

• Servings: 2 (main course) or 4 (starter)
• Calories per serving: 591 kcal (main)/296 kcal (starter)
• Preparation time: 30 min
• Start to finish: 55 min

Ingredients

• 2 large onions
• 2 ounces of unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• ½ teaspoon of dried thyme
• ¼ teaspoon of ground black pepper
• ¼ teaspoon of salt
• 1 ¼ cups (300 ml) of beef broth
• Optional: ½ cup of white wine
• Olive oil
• 1 garlic clove
• 4-6 slices of baguette bread
• 3,5 ounces (100 grams) of Gruyère cheese

Cut each onion in 4 quarters and cut each part into relatively thin slices. Melt the butter in a pan on medium heat, add the onions and let them cook until the onions are softened and transparent for approximately 5 minutes. Proceed by adding sugar and after 1 or 2 minutes add beef broth, salt, pepper and thyme (plus the optional wine). Let it simmer for 15 minutes.

While the soup simmers, cut off 4-6 thin slices of baguette bread (depending on the size of the bread and the size of your bowls), rub half a garlic clove over the slices and fry them in a pan with a bit of olive oil until crunchy.

Fill the soup into 2 suitable bowls that can resist the oven heat and place the bread slices on top. Ideally they should cover the bowl entirely. Cut the Gruyère cheese into thin slices and place them on top. The slight advantage of slices over simply grating the cheese is the slightly more solid texture you get after the soup has been in the oven. The important thing however is to have multiple cheese layers. The soup should then bake in the oven for 25 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius/400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Et voilà. You are now all set to enjoy a delicious meal.