French Onion Soup

I love a good french onion soup.  My favorite part is cheesy goodness on top.  I love cheese.  Cheese and wine... yum.  My favorites.  This recipe is from Melissa D'Arabian on Food Network.  I love the concept of her show.  $10 dinners for roughly 4 servings and her recipes are really good!  Spending less on food makes more room for my shopping budget or nowadays, it makes more room in my budget for a new camera lens. 

Recipe

Adapted from 10 Dollar Dinners

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter

4 yellow onions (about 1 3/4 pounds), thinly sliced with the grain to hold their shape

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon flour

1/2 cup dry red wine

1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon lemon juice 

4 cups vegetable stock 

1/2 cup grated Gruyere

1 tablespoon grated Parmesan

4 (1-inch thick) baguette slices, cut on the bias

Directions

In a heavy bottomed Dutch oven or large saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the onions, sprinkle with salt, cover, and cook until deeply caramelized, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Turn the heat up to medium and sprinkle the onions with the flour. Stir and allow to cook for 1 or 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the red wine. Add the thyme, bay leaf, lemon juice, and stock and simmer for 10 minutes. Taste and add salt and pepper, as needed. Ladle the soup into 4 ovenproof crocks. 

Heat the broiler to high. Mix the cheeses together in a small bowl. Top each crock with a baguette slice and evenly distribute the cheese on top of each. Place the crocks under the broiler just until the cheese is bubbly and browning, about 1 minute. Serve hot.

Separate the thyme leaves from the woody stem.



I adore caramelized onions.  You can use the same cooking method to caramelize onions for sandwiches, burgers, tarts, etc.  It took me an hour to slow cook the onions down as shown in the picture below.



I added the red wine to the onions and cooked off the alcohol a little bit and deglazed the dutch oven.



I deviated from the original recipe and I used vegetable stock instead of beef or chicken stock because I wanted to make the recipe vegetarian.  



Down below is a before the oven picture and after the oven picture.  I generously topped the baguette with cheese and it melted in the toaster oven.  I used a toaster oven to melt the cheese instead of the broiler because I think it's more convenient.  Just turn the toaster oven on the highest it can go and watch the cheese melt.