French Onion Soup & A Lesson About Beefiness Stock

To first, this wasn't our showtime endeavor at French onion soup, nor our 2nd. We know how to make this shit. And it'due south and so easy! Even so, we were inspired to make it even better — nosotros took Chef Alex's advice and created a homemade beef stock for our soup. He believes that the key to the best French onion soup is the stock, not the onions. We trusted that he knew what he was talking about (he is French afterwards all, and god preclude that we argue with a Frenchman), then we attempted to make a homemade stock for our soup. By almost whatever metric this experiment was a full success. However, we felt like it wasn't — we know we can do better. How exactly did we mess up? Well, keep reading.

If you already know how to make French onion soup, gyre down to the GIF of Chef Alex to read near our kickoff attempt at beef stock. (Sidenote: if anyone wants to throw us a couple of bucks so we tin can upgrade to a Business plan on Squarespace so nosotros tin can employ anchor links, that'd be crawly. Shameless cocky-promotion over.)

How to Make French Onion Soup

First off, you're going to want to peel and slice at to the lowest degree 3 pounds (1.5kg) of sweet onions (xanthous or white, but definitely non crimson onions). Bust out your best pocketknife and get ready to cry!

I'm not crying, you're crying.

I'm not crying, you lot're crying.

🔪 Mediocre Tip: We aren't kidding about using your best knife. Make sure that bad boy is every bit sharp as possible. The sharper the knife, the less onion juice gets sprayed around, which means less tears. If you however observe yourself crying, try cooling your onions down in the refrigerator before cut them. Brittany doesn't believe that it works, but Trevor swears by information technology.

Once you lot've cut upwards all of the onion, you're going to desire to add a decent sized knob of butter and a healthy drizzle of oil to a big pot. Add together in your onions and season liberally with salt — the common salt will help to draw the moisture out of the onion, speeding the whole procedure up. Fix your burner to a medium-loftier heat and let the onions do their thing. Yous'll desire to stir the onions around every few minutes to make certain nothing burns, but for the nearly role you're just going to let them cook by themselves.

The beginning.

The commencement.

It will seem like forever, merely eventually the onions volition begin to turn chocolate-brown. Non a harsh, burnt, chocolate-brown colour, but a dainty caramel brown. Unsurprisingly, this means that the onions take begun to caramelize. Once everything is a nice deep brownish colour, add together in a cup of white wine to the pot and start scraping. The goal here is to endeavor and scrape up as much of the chocolate-brown bits stuck at the bottom of the pot equally possible — this technique is called deglazing and will result in an amazing tasting soup.

🍷 Mediocre Tip: The wine that you employ for deglazing doesn't accept to be super expensive. Nosotros unremarkably choose to use a fairly cheap canteen (such as The Naked Grape Pinot Grigio — $11 per bottle) as the booze will become cooked off. What'due south more than important is to utilise a dry white wine — nix too sweet.

You lot're going to want to let the onion-wine mixture melt until all the alcohol has been cooked off. The best manner to tell if it's been cooked off is to have a deep whiff of the steam. If it stings your nose and smells like a sharpie, there's nevertheless booze in at that place. Trust us, you desire to cook off all the alcohol — any remaining alcohol will make the soup taste biting and unpleasant.

Almost there...

Almost there...

The adjacent pace is to add in a scrap of flour — not too much, a tablespoon at about. This will thicken the soup up a bit. If you'd like to keep things gluten free, feel complimentary to skip this step. Yous won't lose much. Cook the flour for a minute or ii to take the harshness out of it.

The concluding thing to practice is to add the beefiness stock and an herb bundle. Nosotros opted for fresh rosemary, thyme, and dried bay leaves for our herbs. For three pounds of onions you'll want to add about 1 litre of beef stock.

🌿 Mediocre Tip: Tie your herbs together using a piece of cotton twine so you can easily fish them out of the soup! Or, don't listen to the states and have fun playing Performance with your herbs.

Let it simmer for 30-45 minutes to develop some flavour and congrats, you lot've made French onion soup. To terminate, cascade the soup into oven safe bowls, top with a few slices of French bread and shredded gruyère (or any other kind of difficult, aged cheese), and put it in the oven to broil for fiveish minutes or until the cheese is melted and gold brown. Bon appétit!

🥖 Mediocre Tip: To maximize the flavour, toast your bread slices in the oven beforehand. Let them get toasty and then rub them with one-half of a clove of garlic while still hot. Trust united states, this takes things to the next level.

Alex wants you to step up your cooking game to the next level.

Alex wants you lot to step upwardly your cooking game to the next level.

And so, now you know how to brand French onion soup. But nosotros haven't talked about how we messed up. And then what's the deal? Well, our problem lies with the beefiness stock. As mentioned above, we decided to make some from scratch for this attempt. Let'south talk about that.

Empty Stomachs as a Function of Time: A Beefiness Stock Tale

  • 1:30pm: Trevor arrives at Brittany's flat ready to make the beef stock.

  • ii:00pm: The beef and vegetable medley is ready to get seared in the oven.

  • 2:45pm: Searing is consummate, everything is transferred to the pot, water is added, the game is on.

Roasted veggies, beef, and bones. Also, look at dat steam.

Roasted veggies, beef, and bones. As well, await at dat steam.

  • iii:00pm: Getting real excited for French onion soup. High fives all around.

  • 3:03pm: Realization hits that we won't be eating until approximately 7:xxx pm.

  • 4:00pm: First sense of taste test of the beef stock — tastes existent watery. That's okay, nonetheless take lots of time.

  • iv:30pm: Shit, we forgot the cheese.

  • 5:00pm: We have acquired the cheese. Taste test number two — the stock is still very watery.

  • five:01pm: "Anyone want to gild a pizza?" *stomachs mumble*

  • 5:15pm: Nosotros don't desire to exist here all nighttime. Allow'south turn up the heat and remove the lid, we need to offset concentrating the flavours immediately! *stomach rumbling intensifies*

  • half dozen:00pm: Taste examination number three — even so watery, but definitely starting to taste more like beef stock. Added salt and pepper to try and get some sort of season going.

  • half dozen:30pm: Started making the french onion soup. *mouth salivates*

  • 7:15pm: Onions are set up, information technology'due south now or never, there'southward no turning back, we've hit the point of no render — nosotros're all out of time for the stock. Ane last taste test tells u.s.a. that information technology tastes, substantially, how beef stock should gustation.

  • 7:45pm: French onion soup is out of the oven and prepare to be eaten. (Fucking finally!)

As you can see in the above timeline, we panicked when our stock (which is supposed to have a long ass time to make) wasn't developing its flavour quickly plenty. And so nosotros overcompensated to try and speed upward the procedure. We turned the heat manner up and took the hat off. Our thought procedure was: if nosotros try to maximize the amount of h2o that evaporates, the season should concentrate more quickly. And nosotros were right. What we failed to account for was simply how much liquid would evaporate. We started the stock with iii litres of h2o and nosotros ended upwardly with i litre (actually slightly less after skimming the fat off). Doing some quick math, that's a 67% loss of liquid.

quick maths

The outset matter you need to know about making beef stock from scratch is that you're going to need a lot of time — at least 5 hours, and that's the bare minimum. If we were to do this again we would probably ready aside 8 hours, and we'd showtime a lot earlier in the day. That was our misstep. Really, all the other things that happened were all a direct consequence of us not allocating a proper amount of fourth dimension for this undertaking.

This is what our hubris got united states. A beggarly 1 litre of beefiness stock, which was but barely plenty to make the soup. Originally we planned on increasing our French onion soup recipe yield by l%. We decided against that fairly early on, and thank god. We wouldn't have had enough stock.

Womp womp.

Womp womp.

Our Mediocre Thoughts

👨‍🍳 Trevor: French onion soup is delicious. This attempt at French onion soup was delicious. Practise y'all know what isn't delicious? Failure. Our stock tasted fine, our soup tasted fine, simply I can't help but feel like we failed at the stock because of the insane corporeality of lost liquid.

I knew going into this that making beefiness stock just for the purpose of using it to make French onion soup wouldn't exist worth it, but I was excited nonetheless to try making stock equally information technology's something I've never done earlier. I was kind of hoping that in that location would be plenty leftover stock to take some home. But there wasn't. Because nosotros were impatient. And that's what bothers me. Had nosotros planned a bit better, we might have been able to go a amend yield. But instead, we spent v+ hours and $25-$30 (and that's not counting the price of onions, breadstuff, cheese, or the vino) to get just enough beef stock for i meal of French onion soup — granted there were four the states to feed, but nonetheless.

I exercise plan on making stock again, merely next time I'll offset early on in the morning time and let it cook low and slow for a good chunk of the day in order to maximize the amount of stock I become. I as well wouldn't make the stock for the sole purpose of making French onion soup unless I was really trying to impress someone. I'd prefer to either have pre-made stock on hand, or but become with the store bought stuff.

👩‍🍳 Brittany: Before making French onion soup with Trevor, I'd but ever had information technology once or twice at Boston Pizza. (You tin laugh if y'all want.) Their French onion soup is decent, I approximate... but homemade French onion soup is a 1000000 times better! It's easy to make if you use store-bought beef stock, and I'd say it tastes pretty like compared to using homemade stock. Don't go me wrong, French onion soup with homemade beefiness stock tastes meliorate, but not omigodimustforevermakeitwithhomemadebeefstocknow better.

If I didn't cry so easily cutting onions, I'd probably brand French onion soup more frequently. And if I establish myself having more than leftover beef bones and beefiness trimmings, I'd also probably make homemade beef stock more often (buying ingredients for stock seems silly). For now, I'll be sticking with Amend Than Bouillon.

Our Last Review

Taste: v très biens out of 5 👌👌👌👌👌

Presentation: 4 handsome French men out of 5 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷

Affordability: 2 weak Canadian dollars out of 5 💰💰

If you like onions, y'all'll like French onion soup. If onions aren't your thing, this recipe will be a 1/five. Nosotros love onions, and then naturally, we dearest French onion soup. Although Chef Alex talks nearly the beef stock adding a layer of complexity to the soup, in our opinion the star of the soup is the onions. However, the beefiness stock is still merely as important because it balances the soup by taming the flavour of the onions.

Let's talk about presentation. Our French onion soup isn't fancy by whatsoever means, but nosotros're giving it points for being in a cute ramekin, having perfectly toasted staff of life, and having beautifully melted gruyère. French onion soup is a simple and humble recipe. Sometimes the all-time manner to nowadays such a dish is in a simple and humble container.

Simplicity = Beauty

Simplicity = Beauty

We made this French onion soup with homemade stock, so nosotros have to rate the affordability with this in mind. The big question is, is information technology worth it to make homemade stock simply for French onion soup?

At that place's a way we tin answer this with math! Nosotros need to calculate expected yield versus bodily yield, gene in the time and fiscal price, and real versus nominal efficiency. Bookkeeping for all of these micro and macro variables we get:

math is hard

No.

No it is not worth it. Like nosotros said in our reviews, if yous already have some homemade stock on hand, get ahead, and use it. But to spend the 5-eight hours making the stock, just to make French onion soup? No way. Especially if you take to go out and buy the beef scraps and bones like we did.

Chef Alex, if for some reason you take stumbled on to our shitty weblog, first of all: How-do-you-do, we are  huge fans! We're sorry that we did such a shit task at following your beefiness stock instructions, and we're sorry that nosotros don't think it added much to the soup. But don't worry, we're determined to effort once more someday and ready where we went incorrect.

Whether you want to larn how to brand your ain homemade stock or want to brand French onion soup with store-bought stock, we recommend learning how to make French onion soup from someone who knows what they're talking almost. Listen to Alex's soothing (yet upbeat) French accent here:

Everything from scratch. Onion soup is the nigh traditional and comforting dish ever in France, but did you know you could brand Onion Soup amend ? Tastier and more Efficient . Crispy bread, Homemade beefiness stock, Caramelized onions, Melted Cheese are the essential ingredients to brand the best French Onion Soup.

How practise you make your French onion soup? With a homemade beef stock? Without? Let us know in the comments below!

Disclaimer: We spent half an hour researching the divergence between stock and broth online. We wanted to know if we fabricated a stock, or a goop, or a weird in-between hybrid. And the more research we did, the more confused nosotros got. Some sources say a stock needs to be bone only, whereas a broth should include simply meat. Even more sources claim that bone merely stock should be chosen a articulate broth, and that the difference is in the mouth feel. We don't know exactly what information technology was that we made, but to exist consistent with Chef Alex , nosotros're using "stock" for the compact, fatty, liquid that was simmered for hours.