I made this last night and was very happy with the results! This soup is sweet and rich. By the end of the bowl I was ready for bed (of course, a glass of novello helped).

I'd always thought French Onion Soup was fancy because of the presentation, but it was surprisingly easy. I'll be making this again! Although, I'll probably make less, and serve it as a starter so as not to put my guests into a food coma.

If you've got the time, I'd recommend starting at 10 AM and making a beef broth from scratch. The house will smell wonderful all day!

Very cold day in Northern Wisconsin today. My friends and I did things outside. Came in and wife had made this soup. It was great, everyone loved it.

French onion soups has long been my 86 year old mother's favorite lunch...needless to say, she 's eaten a LOT of different soups all over the world and her comment was this, "What did you do differently? This is far and above the best I've ever had...I believe it was carmelizing the onions and the garlic...and the thyme and bay leaf not found in other recipes. Bon Apetit!

This is the best french onion soup I have ever tasted, It is outstanding! I've made it on several occasions for a number of people and everyone loves it. Great recipe, thanks.

"J'aurais aimé avoir une traduction en Français. Merci."

Vous pouvez traduire avec 'Google Language Tools'. C'est facile!

I used smoked gruyere cheese, it gives the soup a strong flavor, it's very tasty!

This was so good and really easy. I have made other recipes for onion soup but this beats them all. I always read comments to see if anyone has added or omitted anything, but it's perfect the way it is. Not much of a bay leaf fan, but I put a little dried in it and it was fantastic.
The last recipe I used took 2 days. This reduced down in a couple of hours. Note:
If you want to serve this to more than 2 people, double or triple the recipe, you will not be sorry!
Toast the bread to make it like croutons, that's the only thing I'd do differently

Tried this recipe last night--it was AWESOME! Everybody RAVED!

Thanks!

Just made this morning, have a little bit of the flu and once I had this French onion soup I felt a lot better. Although I substituted the toast with garlic parmesan croutons from costco and used gouda cheese instead of gruyere, it was fabulous. Thanks for the recipe.

Umm I was wondering if you can use fish stock instead of beef or chicken? :D

Something tells me that wouldn't be particularly appetizing with this soup. But if you try it, please let us know how it turns out for you. ~Elise

Hi Elise,

My kids and my husband loved your recipe. We all enjoyed the soup, especially when I could control the salt input! Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful recipe to everyone!

I wish you and your family a very happy and healthy New Year!

Thank you Diep, I'm so glad you liked it. A happy New Year to you too! ~Elise

I made this soup over the weekend using 4 cups chicken broth and 4 cups beef. (It's all I had in the pantry). Elise, For the cheese I used grated swiss and then sliced havarti over that. It was fantastic! I will definitely make this again.

Is there a way to make this vegetarian?

You can use vegetable stock, but truly it will not taste the same. If you do so I would double up on the caramelized onions, you'll need it for the flavor. ~Elise

Great recipe, only change was I added a little olive oil to the bread and toasted it. It was wonderful.

I made the soup using beer instead of wine. I usually use red wine to compliment the beef stock. I also included the left over bone from grilled steaks we had 3 nights ago. instead of the individual bowls. We serve straight off the stove out of the pot. ( we are very informal) The beer added a certain earthiness to the dish. It reminds me of beef stew (pub style). Everyone loved it. the cheese melts from the heat of the dish.

Hello, I'm a vegetarian and I substituted the beef/chicken broth with vegetable broth.

I must say that despite obvious differences in the broth flavors, the vegetarian broth did well. The bay leaf and thyme were very good touches and made a big difference to the soup.

The onions were rather sweet so I did not double the onions as the flavor was already pungent.

Also, I added balsamic vinegar as i did not have white wine, 2 teaspoons. It isnt the best substitute but I have a preference for balsamic vinegar.

overall, its a very good soup which i enjoyed very much. SO VEGETARIANS go ahead and make it!!

Your recipe is wonderful!!!!! Thank you :)

I just made this earlier. I did not follow the directions exactly. In fact I did it very differently... I thought, "O_O What frying pan holds 8 cups of water?" Well, mine didn't... So I halved the ingredients. 3 onions, 4 cups of broth, and so on. Also, I made broth by mixing some vegetable bouillon with water. I'm a vegetarian, so I didn't use beef broth as the recipe called for. I thought it tasted wonderful... The only thing it lacked was the bay leaf. My mom said we didn't have any. Another mistake would be not halving the wine. I still used the 1/2 cup :P, it turned out fine, although it smelled a lot like wine before it was completely done cooking.

I tasted some of those caramelized onions as they were cooking. I thought, "I could make this sometime as a snack... Mmmmmmmmm."

Overall, great recipe. I loved it.

Superb, sublime. Who knew french onion soup could be so good? When you're raised on the version from a can or from a package, you have no idea how nice this can be. I didn't serve it with the cheese as it was rich enough without. Just serve it will some nice bread for dipping and keep it simple.

FOR VEGETARIANS :)
I made this last night with vegetable broth and added a handfull of diverse dehidrated mushrooms to strengthen the broth and in my opinion it came out perfect. ♥ there's a veggie version for everything ♥

Just made this soup for dinner. I was feeling a bit under the weather and had some onions about to go bad on me. Therefore, french onion soup it was....I used home-made beef stock, dry vermouth & emmenthaler swiss cheese. Absolute heaven!!! Better than at the restaurants since I control all the ingredients. Thanks for a great recipe.

I made this French Onion soup the other day for lunch, and it was fantastic! It had a unique sweetness that was unmatched by any French onion soup I've tried before, and it tasted marvelous!

I'm lactose-intolerant so I skip the cheese whenever I have French onion soup, and sometimes it seems a bit lacking. This soup, however, was delicious even without the cheese. It was even better reheated the next day.

I am making this again today for my parents (my mom in particular LOVES French onion soup) and I'm very sure they'll both love it. Thanks for such a wonderful recipe!

So, I decided to make this soup as I'm sick and thought it would make a nice dinner. According to your instructions, the total cooking time on this should be about 1.25-1.5 hours. Well, nearly 3 hours in, the soup is still nit done and I am exhausted and frustrated. The onions took nearly 2 hours to caramelize, not 30-40 minutes. I would not have chosen to make this tonight if I had known how long it would take. I just hope it tastes good at this point.

Wow I made this last night. It was so good! I made it for my boyfriend and I. Let me tell you he is tougher to please than a New York city food critic. So I was nervous making it for him. but he told me it was the best he ever had. Thank you so much!

wow this was SOOO good. Thank you so much for this perfect recipe.

I just made this soup for work. I work at a golf club, and we make different kinds of soup all the time. It turned out awesome! I'm not the head chef yet but with soups like this it won't be long!

OK - beef "chine" is shin.

[quote] Can any other type of cheese be used for this recipe?

Great question, I don't know! I've always made French onion soup with Swiss cheese, usually Gruyere. ~Elise[/quote]

I used mozzarella and it comes out wonderfully. Especially when you have lots of long strings lifting a spoonful out.. mmmm (most chain restaurants cheat and use mozzarella but it's what I prefer.

As with any recipe, customize it to your tastes, but if you go with mozzarella, i personally guarantee it will be great.

Just made this for my family and even though I didn't caramelize the onions quite enough it was still delicious! Will make it again for sure

Kinda improvised a bit,I used tarragon with the onions instead of thyme as my girlfriend isnt very fond of it. It made for a bit of a sweeter flavor in the soup. I also boiled the onion and garlic ends/peels into the beef stock(I actually had some ends set into the freezer as well from other culinary exploits), as well as some rosemary, thyme and bay.

Word of warning: Make sure that you carmelize the onions in a well ventilated room. Our whole place was full of onion smell, and it was so strong it even got my poor cats eyes watering.

(Maybe on the grill? Little wood smoke would add a brand new flavor level to the soup. Also, maybe use rendered beef fat instead of olive oil,or maybe butter?)

After searching for a good french onion soup recipe, I selected this one based on the positive comments. Unfortunatly, I have to disagree with them. I usually improvise recipes, but followed this one to a T because I hadn't made french onion soup before. I used 6 onions, 3 red and 3 sweet, but this was overkill. When the soup had finished cooking, I had to spoon out half of the onions. Also, I found the broth lacking. I used store bought organic beef broth, but had to doctor it up with worcestershire sauce and a touch of tomato paste (a tip from America's Test Kitchen) to create meaty richness. In the end, the family consensus was there were still too many onions. I tossed the remaining onions and am reserving the broth for a beef stew. Needless to say, I will not be making this recipe again.

This was the best onion soup I ever had. I made is for Christmas appetizer last year, all my guests loved it and were fighting over taking home the leftover (quadrupled the recipe). I was told I had to make it again this year.

Made this last night using store bought beef stock (sorry, no time to create the real thing). Otherwise followed the recipe exactly. Tasted pretty nice, but even with pre-toasting, the bread was super soggy. Any tricks on avoid this?

You might want to sprinkle some cheese on the soup before laying down the toasted bread and adding more cheese. The bread will get soggy, it's lying in soup. But perhaps not as soggy if you put some more cheese between the soup and the bread. ~Elise

Elise ,It is a great recipe,i always thought that frech onion soup is somehing difficult to make,but it was quite the opposite,it is very easy,i used red wine instead of white wine,and added 3tbs. of worcestersshire sauce,gr8 taste,thank u.but i need to ask you, onion soup tastes better with white wine more than red wine?thanks

When it comes to wine, it's usually a matter of personal taste. I would experiment and see what wine works best for you. ~Elise

This was a great way to use up hard old bread! *grin* Thanks for a delicious recipe.