Soupe à l'Oignon
French Onion Soup with a Gruyère Crust
Onions cooked slowly in butter until they are soft, sweet and the colour of toffee, simmered in stock and finished under the grill beneath toast and a thick layer of melted cheese. The patience goes into the onions. If they are pale, the soup will be thin.
The soup is tied to Les Halles, the central market of nineteenth-century Paris, where it fed market workers through the night and party-goers at dawn. The gratinée, with its crust of bread and cheese, is the Parisian form.
The French recipe read cooks 550 g of onions in 60 g of butter for about half an hour until light brown, adds flour, then a litre and a half of beef or chicken stock and a bouquet garni, and simmers for another half hour before the bowls go under the grill with baguette and Gruyère.
Ingredients
Ingredients
- 60 g unsalted butter
- 550 g onions (about 4 medium), halved and thinly sliced
- 2 tbsp plain flour
- 1.5 litres beef or chicken stock
- 1 bouquet garni (thyme, bay, parsley stalks)
- 1/2 stale baguette, cut into slices 1 cm thick
- 200 g Gruyère, grated
- Fine sea salt and black pepper
Method
- Cook the onions Melt the butter in a large heavy pan over a medium-low heat. Add the onions and a pinch of salt and cook for 30 to 35 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until soft, reduced by more than half and an even light brown. Do not rush them.
- Add flour and stock Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute. Add the stock gradually, stirring, then the bouquet garni. Bring to the boil.
- Simmer Lower the heat and simmer, partly covered, for 30 minutes. Remove the bouquet garni and season.
- Gratinate Heat the grill to high. Toast the baguette slices lightly. Ladle the soup into four ovenproof bowls on a baking tray, float the toast on top and cover generously with Gruyère. Grill for 3 to 5 minutes, until the cheese is melted and browned in patches. Serve at once, warning everyone that the bowls are hot.
A wide pan browns the onions faster than a deep one.