by wcfoodies
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A&M's Testing Notes:
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3 pounds
onions
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3 tablespoons
butter
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2 tablespoons
olive oil
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4-6
cloves of garlic
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1
generous pinch of salt
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a few good grinds of black peppercorns
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4 sprigs
fresh thyme
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1
bay leaf
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4-6 cups
beef, veal, and/or vegetable stock, preferably homemade
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2 cups
red wine, preferably a burgundy, OR
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2 cups
beer, preferably a brown ale or stout (not chocolate)
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1
baguette or other crusty bread
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4-6
deli slices of cheese, OR
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1/2 cup
EACH of gouda, gruyere, parmesan & pecorino
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Slice & segment 3 pounds of onions.
Ask the hotline about this step!Melt together the butter and olive oil in a large stockpot.
Ask the hotline about this step!Crush and peel the garlic. You don't have to mince it; it will caramelize and turn soft and sweet as it cooks. Caramelize the garlic in the olive oil and butter.
Ask the hotline about this step!Pour in the onions, season with salt and pepper, and stir around just until the onions are all coated in the olive oil/butter.
Ask the hotline about this step!Add in the fresh thyme and the bay leaf and let the onions caramelize, about 20 minutes.
Ask the hotline about this step!Once the onions are caramelized and have cooked down, pour in the stock, about 4-6 cups depending on whether you prefer your soup more onion-y or more soup-y.
Ask the hotline about this step!Then, pour in the wine or beer and simmer, uncovered, for at least an hour and as much as three hours, tasting occasionally to adjust the flavors.
Ask the hotline about this step!Meanwhile, slice down your bread. Stale bread is perfectly okay for this, just heat it up a bit in a warm (250ºF) oven first to soften it. Toast the bread; you can rub both sides with a cut clove of garlic first, if you like. You'll want 2 pieces of bread per person - one for the bottom of the bowl, and one for on top.
Ask the hotline about this step!If you're going for the mix of cheeses, grate together about 1/2 cup each of parmesan, pecorino, gouda, and gruyere. Alternatively, you can drape a deli-cut slice of cheese (emmentaler, gruyere) over the top of the bowls, but I like to do a grated mix. Get that ready, and set it aside.
Ask the hotline about this step!Preheat your broiler. Remove the thyme sprigs and bay leaf from the soup.
Ask the hotline about this step!Arrange your oven-safe individual serving bowls or coffee mugs on a baking tray with a thin lip.
Ask the hotline about this step!TO SERVE: drop a toast slice in the bottom of each bowl. Ladle in the soup and cover with a second slice of toast. Then cover the toast with cheese. Be generous! You want the cheese to seal in the soup and drape over the edge of the bowl.
Ask the hotline about this step!Broil for a few minutes, until the cheese is brown and bubbling on top. Garnish with a little fresh thyme, and serve.
Ask the hotline about this step!Depending on what kind of beer you used and if it was a little old, it could be the beer. It could also be a result of using old onions. Perhaps try replacing the beer with red wine next time, or cutting the alcohol entirely?
just made this soup! The best ever onion soup! This made my New Year's weakened. Thank you.
Wow. Made this tonight (a cold night in Atlanta) and my fiance and I loved it! Used a can of Guiness, parmesan and smoked Gouda. Yum!
If I had some veal stock at home I would adore to have this tonight. The wind has been howling all day. It's a day for onion soup and a nice wine :) This is a perfect recipe.
Congratulations! We love French Onion soup and can't wait to try yours!
congrats, that is a nice onion soup. I haven't made onion soup this year. I am going to give this a go.
I've always made french onion soup with a sherry, but I love this beer variation and the 3 cheese combo is a nice touch!
This looks very delicious. Love the addition of pecorino to the cheese mix.
We live in the same city, I think we need to have a dinner party with your soup my bread pudding!
I make my French Onion soup with beer too and agree that it adds such an amazing depth of flavor to great traditional soup! I'll definitely have to try yours too!
OMG, I second EWing, this recipe is absolutely scrumptious!
I made this a few weeks ago for my family. I just used Parmesan and gruyere and beef stock. It would have been nice to have this up in text rather than rewinding the video numerous times. None the less still love the show and this dish was a hit!
Hi, Ewing! Thanks for giving the recipe a shot, I'm thrilled you and your family enjoyed it!
We're working on creating a better recipe database system on the site so you guys won't have to rewind to get the recipe down. Thanks for the input, we love getting feedback!
-Rebecca
This recipe sounds promising (red wine and beer!)...but really, is this a working class recipe? The alcohol plus 1/2 each of pricey cheeses is what has me thrown. Nonetheless, I'll break the bank to try it out since it sounds delicious.
Good questions, Gabriela. Here's how we break down the price for our show:
- each dish must cost under $8/person, or $16 for a 2-person meal, because that's about what you'd pay for a standard lunch (sandwich, salad, lunch-menu entree) at most restaurants in NYC. 99% of the time, we come in way under budget, more in the $4-5 range.
- some of our dishes do call for pricier items - but, these are always items that come in quantities and are flexible enough to be used in more than one recipe. For example, when we use wine to make this soup, we calculate into the cost of the dish the amount of wine that went into the soup; the leftover wine you can obviously enjoy either by drinking it with your dinner, or saving it for another recipe. For the cheeses, I spent about $20 for all four of those large bricks of cheese, and used less than half of that for the soup. Parmesan and pecorino are practically pantry items - they'll last in the fridge for a couple of months, and are great on everything from eggs to pasta to salads. The leftover gruyere and gouda both make amazing grilled cheeses.
The financial 'point' of Working Class Foodies is to buy quality ingredients and use them well. That means factoring in what to do with the leftovers, and it's a feature I'm hoping to introduce to the site for the 2nd season. This might sound awkward or like I'm being clever, but I'm not; chances are, when you go grocery shopping, you don't buy a single-serving handful of arugula, 1/2 a tomato, and 1/4 box of dried pasta. You don't shop in serving sizes, in other words. We try to show, in our price breakdowns, the value of each serving in a typically purchase-able quantity of food.
Hope that helps!
-Rebecca
Thanks Rebecca, It makes sense once you break it down. I'm definitely giving this a recipe a try this weekend. I plan on using a bottle of Guinness Stout I already have in the fridge and I'm making a run to Westside Market for the cheese; a recipe that requires me to go to my favorite nyc grocery store is always a treat! Thanks!
OK, I did kind of combine parts of the recipe here with another recipe from another site. I like the beer in the soup, and most of the recipe but prefer a triple de-glaze method in the oven instead of cooktop. But I have done this twice just recently and I have gotten a hint of a bitter aftertaste that I can not identify why. Can the beer do that or what would you suggest as the source of this or my error in that regard? Thanks.