Over the holidays, I jumped at the opportunity to make French Onion Soup.
Locked in the house on a streak of days when, if it wasn’t snowing, it was cold, and rain-soaked, I had plenty of time to make this French classic the way it deserves to be made. Caramelized onions cooked in a rich, beefy broth, topped with a slab of baguette and bubbling hot cheese, this soup is my idea of perfect winter comfort. It is also, in my experience, one of the easiest dishes in the world to ruin with a shortcut.
The recipe I first chose, however, was some poor, misguided soul’s idea of onion soup. Clipped from a magazine I’ve since tossed, it claimed you could enjoy France’s gift to soup tureens everywhere in 30 minutes. Not so. Tasting nothing like any version of onion soup, foreign or domestic, that I’ve ever had, this insipid brew was a huge disappointment and a waste of time. Some things should never be rushed. French Onion Soup is one of them.
The Secret to Great French Onion Soup: Deeply Caramelized Onions (Without Babysitting a Stove)
Lo and behold, along comes this recipe for superb Slow Cooker French Onion Soup.
The hardest part of this whole recipe is cutting the onions. That’s it. The rest is basically doing nothing at all for the next 12 hours while your slow cooker quietly performs its magic. The onions become dark golden-brown and perfectly soft—sweet, savory, and deep in the way only patience can deliver. The next step is to add the beef broth and balsamic vinegar and wait another 6 to 8 hours. Twenty hours may be an eternity to wait. But you’ll be richly rewarded for your patience.
It’s irresistible: an incomparable, heartwarming bowl of caramelized onions and rich beef stock topped with toasted French bread and melted Comté cheese. It makes you wish for cold weather. And for all its goodness, it’s not all that hard to make—except for those caramelized onions. They’re the heart of the dish. They require great patience to achieve greatness…unless you let the slow cooker do the heavy lifting.
There’s a Lot of Lore Behind the Soup…So While You Wait, Read On…
Onion soup goes back to at least ancient Rome and likely a lot earlier. Onions are easy to grow and they’ve always been inexpensive, so everyone from the poor to the nobility ate them. The modern version of French Onion Soup dates from the 18th century and the reign of Louis XV.
Story number one involves Nicolas Appert, the food scientist who invented canning. Reportedly, a young Appert cooked at a hotel called La Pomme d’Or in Châlons-en-Champagne. The Duke of Lorraine, ex-King of Poland, stopped at the hotel en route to Versailles to visit his daughter Queen Marie, the wife of Louis XV. Appert prepared an onion soup. The duke was so taken with the soup that he insisted on watching it being prepared to take the recipe home. In 1831, Appert published a cookbook dedicating the onion soup recipe to the duke.
A second tale has Louis XV himself inventing the soup. This legend has the king returning from hunting to find only butter, onions, and champagne. He and his great aunt improvised and cooked them all together in a soup that the Royal Court was mad for. Seriously? A king in the kitchen? Highly doubtful. Especially one with a reputation for being a womanizer and a notoriously bad monarch.
So, When Did the Soup Take on Its Signature Bread and Cheese Topping?
Les Halles, the central marketplace in Paris, was founded in 1135. It was so popular it grew to encroach on a 
cemetery. Not even a high wall could keep out the stench. Finally, the rotting bones were removed to the Catacombs in the 19th century and Les Halles came into its own.
The entire market was ringed with inexpensive bistros to feed the workers, and these bistros came up with the idea of soaking bread in the soup and broiling cheese on top of it. Since much of the work in the market was done either late in the night or early in the morning—take your pick—Parisian party-goers and bon vivants ended their nights at these 24-hour restaurants. Sitting side by side, the very rich and the very poor came together over bowls of onion soup.
It didn’t hurt that the soup developed a reputation as being a great cure for a hangover. There’s not a lot of science to back that up. But onions are one of the healthiest of all vegetables and salt can help replace lost electrolytes.
NEED A SLOW COOKER? HERE’S A GREAT ONE FOR NOT A LOT OF MONEY: https://amzn.to/3NeTXc5
Here is today’s recipe. And after it, some other winter soups we love. Click on the link or on the photo to go to the post.
An incomparable heartwarming bowl of caramelized onions and rich beef stock topped with toasted French bread and melted Comté cheese.Slow Cooker French Onion Soup
Ingredients
Directions
