French Onion Soup

by: karen

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Onion soup recipes usually call for beef broth, which puts some of us off or has us reaching for a can. Despite the fact that French onion soup can still be marvelous even made with indifferent canned broth, anemic cheese, and white bread, it is worth using a decent broth and the most savory cheese you can find. Because the onions are so flavorful, it makes little difference whether you use beef broth or something else. Some of the best onion soups use turkey broth made from the leftover holiday carcass, and the Brown Chicken Broth on pages 36-37 is also a good choice. Traditional recipes call for Gruyere cheese, which is Swiss without the holes, but any sharp, semi-hard cheese, such as Cheddan aged Gouda, or Fontina d'Aosta, works beautifully. The bread should have a dense crumb—don’t use airy bread, which will get soggy—and is ideally cooked in butter ahead of time, which keeps it from absorbing liquid. If you run out of time and don’t brown the bread in butter; your soup will still be a success. One warning: You are going to end up with what looks like a mountain of raw onions. Don’t worry as they will cook down to about one-tenth of their original volume. Don’t use overly sweet onions, such as Vidalia; use a mild onion, such as a red onion.