Anyway, French Onion Soup is a classic, made very popular by Julia Child and restaurant chefs everywhere.  That means that it got this way by being awesome, and has since been made in homes and restaurants with great pleasure and success, and at times had culinary heresy committed against it by restaurants wanting to have it on their menus and serving something that is barely passable, and a far cry from what it originally was.


  

By the way, I sometimes ate French Onion Soup but was never really hooked until last January, when Drew took me to Savannah for a late Christmas present.  We ate at Bistro 529 (highly recommend it if you're in Savannah, GA!), and Malcolm Love (our very awesome waiter) told us to order the soup.  Malcolm never steered us wrong.  It was the closest thing to Heaven in a bowl you can get.  Maybe that will be served in Heaven, as the soup course in the Marriage Feast of the Lamb, you know, provided there's a soup course.  My point is that this soup recipe is GOOD! 

If you've never had real french onion soup, make this recipe and forget about all the over salted, under-cooked onion varieties that have made you wonder why people order French Onion Soup, apart from the cheesy deliciousness over the top.  It's complex, bright, and warming.  This is another kitchen cred recipe.  Why are all the French-based recipes the ones that seem to come with the most kitchen cred?

Unlike most of the other recipes I've read, PW starts her onions on the stove top, then roasts them in the oven, and then returns them to the stove top for the rest of the preparation.  It's a good way to do things, and the end result was one of the first few dishes I've ever used real wine in that didn't make me gag.  Progress!  To see step by step pictures and directions, I encourage you to visit this post on PW's website.  She's great with photography and step-by-steps.  

French Onion Soup

by Pioneer Woman

serves 8ish

• I can't remember the type of wine I used- maybe a pinot grigio?  While not all wines do this, the label specified that it was a dry wine with a light flavor.  It worked well here.  The alcohol does cook out, but the wine itself is a unique flavor.  As I said before, it was one of the first times I have used wine in food that I didn't want to gag while eating it.  So take caution.  I would imagine if you don't want to use wine in your cooking, extra chicken broth would work too.
• My onions required slightly more time to cook, but because some of them started to burn in the oven, I cooked on the stove top.  
• I used smoked gruyere from Aldi, because of the price.  It didn't melt well.  I don't know if it was the particular block I had, that it was from Aldi, or that it was smoked.  Either way, just buy the original, or something you've had experience with before.  
• We ate several meals out of this- reheats well.  Just make the bread and cheese as you need it for best results.

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