The Best French Onion Soup Ever – easy and delicious french onion soup with a cheesy crouton on top – just like your favorite restaurant, but a million times better for a family-pleasing classic!
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Easy Homemade French Onion Soup
This recipe for french onion soup is one of my all-time favorite comfort food soups.
There is something about French Onion Soup that makes me smile – it is rich, buttery, and a tiny bit sweet – all topped with melty gooey cheese and a slightly crunchy piece of bread.
It’s rich, salty, full of sweet and salty onion flavor – and the cheese and bread on top are heavenly.
I never really put in the time making French Onion Soup at home – I made Alton Brown’s recipe once in college and remembered I really liked it, but when I went back to make it again recently I didn’t have all the ingredients he called for – so I decided to make some tweaks and come up with my own spin off his Good Eats classic.
I was really inspired by a recent trip we took over Christmas to Western Germany, which included a day trip to Strasbourg France.
Strasbourg is such a lovely city full of both German and French architecture (thanks in part to the tumultuous history of the Alsace region, as it was controlled by France and Germany in the past) – and while Strasbourg gives those visiting France some delicious German offerings, we’d been dining on schnitzel and spaetzle for a week already, and went straight for the French food during our visit, including having some delicious onion soup!
To see more about Strasbourg, please check out my post full of pictures – A Christmas Day Trip to Strasbourg France.
You can also find one of my favorite Alsatian inspired recipes – Alsace Choucroute Garnie (Braised Pork Meat Pot) here!
I was dying to recreate some of our meal at home – and I knew French Onion Soup would be a great dish to start off with.
This soup is so easy to make – and so delicious!
It is bursting with flavor, and requires very little skill (just a bit of patience!).
This French Onion Soup is perfect for dinner parties or romantic evenings since you can make most of it ahead of time, and simply pop it into the oven to broil the cheese when you’re ready to eat!
How to Make French Onion Soup
French onion soup is simple to make – you can even make it ahead of time!
There are a couple steps to pay attention to, like giving your onions plenty of time to caramelize, to help flavor develop.
Don’t rush cook-time – it will be tempting, but the payoff for slowly caramelized onions is totally worth the wait!
- Start by arranging ingredients – while you can use pre-shredded cheese, we reccomend shredding fresh for best results.
- Cut onions in half, then into thin strips.
- Melt butter in pan.
- Add onions and brown.
- Let onions develop golden brown color, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes.
- Add wine and herbs to onions, let reduce further.
- When well reduced, add stock and bring to boil.
- Spoon into oven safe bowls.
- Add stale/crusty bread to top.
- Top with shredded gruyere.
- Bake or broil until cheese is melted and bubbling hot.
- Serve and enjoy!
Make Ahead French Onion Soup
French Onion Soup isn’t just my favorite because it’s easy and so delicious – it’s also pretty easy to make a huge batch and freeze for later!
To freeze French Onion Soup, follow these tips:
- Make soup as directed until bread and cheese additions.
- Remove from heat and let cool completely.
- Portion soup into servings you’d like to serve later (ie: if you’re making this soup for one, you might want to portion out single serving sizes – if you will be making this for a dinner party, you can just keep the soup all together.)
- Ladle portioned soup into ziploc freezer bags.
- Lay bags flat on a baking sheet and place in freezer until set – about 4-5 hours.
- One soup bags are set (so they have a long, thin shape instead of a big ball, which will thaw unevenly), you can move them off the baking sheet and around the freezer wherever you have room.
- To reheat, let soup thaw fully in refrigerator OR place frozen soup in a large pot with 2-3 cups beef stock and bring to a slow boil.
- Have a couple cups of stock on hand just in case you need to thin the soup a bit – I tend to lose some liquid when freezing and reheating so adding some liquid back helps a lot!
- Continue with steps below to add crouton and cheese and serve.
Tips For Perfect French Onion Soup and FAQs
French onion soup is a perfect dinner party dish – because you can do most of the work ahead of time, so when your guests arrive, you’re ready for a delicious, hearty, and amazing dish that everyone will leave raving about. (And wonder how you were able to pull off so effortlessly!)
To prep your french onion soup ahead of time, follow my easy tips below:
- Make soup as directed below, but do not add bread or cheese.
- Soup can be frozen at this point (without bread and cheese) and reheated for later – or stored in a refrigerator in a sealed container.
- The day of the party, arrange oven safe bowls of soup on a tray, cover with plastic wrap, and store in refrigerator.
- Cut circles out of a hearty french bread or other bread you love that will roughly match the shape of the soup bowl you’re using.
- Lightly brown the bread in the oven until crunchy.
- Shred cheese and have it easily accessible for the party.
- When guests arrive (or just before) remove plastic wrap from soup bowls and pop into oven to warm.
- When soup is warm, but not hot, add bread to tops and top the bread with cheese.
- When guests sit to dinner table, soup will be piping hot and the cheese will be melted and bubbling.
- Serve and enjoy!
FAQs
French onion soup is done when onions have caramelized to deep brown and soup has boiled.
French onion soup uses beef broth, which can be swapped for vegetable stock for a vegetarian version.
For a vegan version, please use a vegan cheese that melts similarly to a mozzarella or gruyere.
What to Serve With French Onion Soup
French onion soup is fabulous alongside steak, ribeye roast, prime rib, lobster tail, cornish game hens, and other fabulous main dishes – but is also great alongside baked potatoes, no knead bread, buttery soft dinner rolls, and garlic butter roasted potatoes.
You can also find more of our recent side dishes here:
You can find the rest of our easy, delicious side dish recipes in our side dish index here.
The Best French Onion Soup Ever
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The Best French Onion Soup Ever
The Best French Onion Soup Ever, bursting with buttery onion and herb flavor and topped with crunchy cheesy bread!
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp butter
- 4 onions, large yellow, sliced into half-moons
- 1/2 cup red wine , or 1/2 cup apple cider
- 2 tsp celtic sea salt
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 2 tbsp garlic powder
- 1 tbsp oregano
- 1 tbsp thyme
- 1 tsp basil
- 12 oz beef broth
- 2 cups gruyere cheese, shredded
- 4 slices of thick, slightly stale bread
Instructions
- Add butter into skillet and melt on medium heat.
- Slowly add in onions, separating them into single slices.
- Add wine or cider and let reduce on low, without stirring.
- Add salt.
- When onions have reduced in size by half and begin to slightly brown, add spices and stir.
- Let reduce further, until dark brown (not burned).
- When onions are deep brown (about 1 hour later), add in stock.
- Let cook on low for another 30 minutes- do not let boil.
- Preheat oven to broil on high.
- Scoop soup into ramekins or oven ready crocks and top with bread and shredded cheese.
- Add into oven and broil until cheese is browned and bubbly.
- Remove from oven and top with cilantro, green onions, or red pepper flakes, if desired.
- Serve immediately.
Nutrition Information
Yield
4Serving Size
1Amount Per Serving Calories 474Total Fat 31gSaturated Fat 18gTrans Fat 1gUnsaturated Fat 10gCholesterol 86mgSodium 1987mgCarbohydrates 28gFiber 3gSugar 10gProtein 17g
Nutrition is automatically calculated by Nutritionix - please verify all nutrition information independently and consult with a doctor or nutritionist for any and all medical and diet advice.
Elizabeth Schultz
Too much in the way of spices, cut the amount at least in half then you might be okay, the first time I made it I had to put the onions in a colander and wash most of the spices off, this time I am cutting way back. Still an excellent recipe though.
Bill
I agree 100%
Rachael Yerkes
This French onion soup deserves all the heart eyes. I love how flavorful it is. Thanks for sharing.
Aimee Shugarman
OMG I love french onion soup. This IS the best recipe 🙂
Anna
I wish I had a big bowl of this soup right now! So tasty!
Kara
I’ve never actually had French onion soup, but this looks so yummy! I love that it looks thicker and chunkier than most recipes I’ve seen. I love hearty soups, so I’ll have to give your version a try!
Ashley F
This recipe is pure fall comfort food!
Anna Beamsley
This soup tasted amazing!! However, I feel the seasoning was too much for the small amount of liquid to handle. Next time, I’m going to double the amount of stock and see how that turns out—as is, we almost considered using forks to eat it. All in all, my fiancé and I made unattractive grunting noises for the first few bites, so I think it’s pretty damn good.