You can tell that I love French onion soup with a pure heart because I can do without the cheese. (I’ve seen her without makeup on, and she’s beautiful.) It’s not that I have anything against fistfuls of melted gruyère–I just don’t see the soup as a melted gruyère delivery mechanism.

The recipe is astonishingly transformative, extracting the best possible performance from a fairly banal ingredient. Every time I make it, I’m impressed all over again that such color and depth of flavor can come out of a couple of bulbs and some beef stock. Allow me to share with you the method I was taught at school, which makes for a soothing, deeply savory soup: properly made, it’s hard to tell where the onions end and the broth begins. My only tweak is the addition of two more members of the allium family, shallots and garlic, for an even sweeter, more rounded flavor.

Classic French Onion Soup–Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

3 large yellow onions, sliced thinly
2 shallots, sliced thinly
6 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
2 tbs butter
2 tbs all-purpose flour
3/4 cup dry white wine
32 oz beef broth
1/4 tsp dry thyme

METHOD

In a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat, sweat the onions, shallots and garlic in the butter.

Leave the onions alone until they start to look like the picture below (about 15 minutes). Not agitating the onions too much will allow for the development of sucs, the brown scrapy bits that accumulate on the pan to give color, flavor and body to the broth. From this point, stir occasionally to avoid burning the sucs–dark brown is desirable, black is not.

After another 15 or 20 minutes, your onions should have decreased dramatically in volume and look something like the following picture. At this point, add the two tablespoons of flour and stir until well-combined. Allow the flour to cook for 1-2 minutes–it will join forces with the butter to create a sort of roux, which will thicken the soup just enough to better support the onions. Deglaze the sucs with the white wine, scraping with the spoon to make sure they dissolve into the liquid. (If you like a sweeter soup, you could use a glass of ale or stout to deglaze; a smaller amount of sherry or cognac will give a different, but equally pleasant, flavor.)

Add the beef broth and thyme and simmer for 10 minutes. Check and adjust seasoning. The soup can be served as is, or like a traditional gratinée: that is, transferred to an individual serving bowl, topped with a crouton of dry bread and the handfuls of grated gruyère we discussed earlier, and placed under the broiler until the whole thing forms a bubbling, nearly impenetrable seal of cheese. Alternatively, make individual cheese toasts and serve on the side for dunking.

Last night, I skipped the cheese entirely, and served the soup with roast beef sandwiches on rye, slathered with good mustard. The combination was such a good one, I think I’ll have it again for lunch.

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