Ten down, 90 to go!! French onion soup was the most time consuming recipe that I have made yet, and also one of the tastiest! I had never even tried this soup before making at home. I always thought that "onion soup" sounded gross, and soggy bread on top, even worse. I was wrong - it was so delicious! It does take quite a bit of time, and this is because you have to carmelize five onions, which took almost an hour. I love carmelized onions, and make them often, but I have never made so many at one time! They filled half of my 7 qt. dutch oven when first cut, and they had to cook down to about half an inch . Since the onions have to be consistently stirred, you just stand at the stove the whole time. The rest of the soup is basically just beef broth, and it has to simmer with the onions for 20 minutes, so it ended up taking about an hour and a half from start to finish. The soup is usually then topped with toasted bread and shredded cheese, and then put under the broiler in the oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese. I was excited about this part, because it looks so fancy, and I thought I had just the right bowls for this purpose. It turns out that the bowls that I was going to use were not oven safe - so sad - so I had to come up with another way to finish off the soup. I had bought a long, skinny loaf of crusty French bread that I sliced and toasted, and topped each piece with Swiss cheese (I couldn't find shredded Swiss, so I cut up slices of Swiss and used those). I broiled those for a few minutes (I recommend spraying the baking sheet first, as the cheese melts down around the bread sometimes), and then topped the soup with them. I found out that it really is not the "soggy bread" that I thought I would be eating - when toasted, and then covered with cheese and re-toasted, the edges stay crispy in the soup, which was perfect! I found that it was kind of hard to cut through the edges of the bread when it was floating on soup, so the next day as I was eating the leftovers, I cut the bread into smaller pieces (like croutons) before toasting and adding cheese. I could then drop a handful into the soup and each one was bite-sized.
YAY! Now you will be able to move onto Step 2 of this recipe, which is "40-clove garlic bisque." Essentially the same thing, but with garlic instead of onion, and gruyere instead of swiss......One time I had to do the broiling in a toaster oven.....heh heh.... {Giedra}
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