Leave it to the French to make a glorious, silky soup from a vegetable as ordinary as an onion. But if it’s so easy to make, why are we often subjected to shoddy bowls of thin, tasteless onion-water? Or, worse, acrid burnt onion broth? Or even worse: a cloudy, oily mess? Like many straightforward dishes, the outcome relies on nailing the technique and deploying just the right ingredients. So the Epicurious Test Kitchen merged the best parts of the recipes on our site to create Our Favorite French Onion Soup.
Caramelize your Vidalia Onions Slowly
As we read through your comments on the French Onion Soup recipes on the site, we heard you loud and clear: “More onions!” After all, it’s not called “Broth Soup” or “Cheesy Bread Soup.” So we took a cue from another Bon Appétit recipe and upped our onion-to-broth ratio to let the main ingredient shine.
We also found many recipes that just called for “onions.” But what kind of onions make for the best soup? We tried caramelizing red, yellow, and Vidalia onions and—shocker—the sweet Vidalias came out on top. Just a sprinkle of sugar and salt (and heat) transform these sweet onions into sweet, nutty, silky strands of pure gold.
But perfectly caramelized onions take time. Undercook your onions, and you’ll miss out on all that the savory sweetness. Some recipes call for cooking them for as little as 15 minutes, but we felt that this was not enough time to draw out their full flavor potential. Cook them too quickly over heat that’s too high, and you risk burning them and adding a scorched, bitter taste to your soup, so resist the urge to speed up this step. This French Onion Soup with Comté calls for cooking the onions for about an hour, which we thought was just right. When your onions are an even, deep golden brown like the kind of tan everyone wanted in the 80s, you know theyre ready.
Pair beef broth with white wine (and skip the flour)
Let’s start with the foundation for our soup. We’ve seen recipes that use beef broth, chicken broth, or a mix of the two. Weve also seen recipes that call for red wine, white wine, or no wine at all. Our taste tests revealed the combination of an all-beef broth with white wine as the clear winner, as used in this Gourmet French Onion Soup. The beef broth (obviously home-made is best, but store-bought works too) adds an underlying richness to the soup, and we favored the lightness and acidity that white wine brings to the table.
We also tested thickening the soup with flour as well as omitting it from the recipe. We preferred the no-flour version, as used in this Bon Appétit rendition, which provides a beautiful clear broth without muddying the sweet and savory flavors of the soup.
How To Make Amazing French Onion Soup
FAQ
Why does my French onion soup taste burnt?
Why does my French onion soup taste weird?
How do you fix French onion soup?
Why are my onions not browning for French onion soup?
Can you cook French onion soup quickly?
There are plenty of soups that you can throw together quickly, but French onion soup is not one of them. By rushing the cooking process of this soup, you’re missing out on a huge amount of flavor. → Follow this tip: Time is the key ingredient that makes this classic cafe soup so wonderful.
Will drinking French onion soup broth interfere with a colonoscopy?
Colonoscopy is an invasive procedure, thus you should follow a clear fluid diet a day before the procedure. You can have water, soups or juices, but not mixed with solid particles.
Can French onion soup be made with more caramelized onions?
In test after test, I found that great French onion soup can be made with more lightly caramelized onions. The deep, sweet flavor that we want arrives long before they turn the color of dark chocolate. And, as I researched other French onion soup recipes, I discovered I wasn’t alone in this realization.
Should French onion soup be dark?
One of the most common beliefs surrounding French onion soup is that the onions must be cooked to a deep, deep, dark, dark mahogany brown. I’m going to start off by calling BS on that premise. It’s not that I think it’s wrong to caramelize the onions darkly; I just don’t think it’s necessary for great results.