On paper French onion soup seems like a simple recipe: it typically has just a handful of ingredients (some of which are pantry staples like salt and butter) and aside from cheese bread you only need one pot to make it. But despite its apparent simplicity there’s still plenty of room for error and a lot of that depends on what you do with the onions in the recipe.
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Babe wanted French onion soup 🍲
First you need to start with the right onion for the job. There’s no “wrong” type of onion to use and some chefs even recommend using a mix but there are a few factors to consider. Red onions can add an unappetizing color to the soup and sweet onions can make the soup less nuanced in flavor with an overpowering sweetness. If you want to keep it classic go with yellow onions. French chef Raymond Blanc has highlighted pink Roscoff onions as a particular type (despite the name they’re not red onions) but since they can be hard to come by yellow onions are probably your best bet. And naturally fresher onions are better than onions that are on the verge of going bad.
You probably want the onions to be palpable in the broth; for this reason most recipes call for dicing them so that you get actual chunks in the soup instead of fine cubes. If they’re chopped too small they won’t have any texture. To prepare those onions you’ll want to trim off the ends and remove the skins as you would in almost any other recipe. But while it may be tempting to slice them parallel to the rings of the onion (this could be called “east to west”) you may be better off cutting them pole to pole or north to south. That’s how Julia Child did it and it helps keep the onion slices intact as they cook.
French chef Ludo Lefebvre even recommends leaving out the core of the onion as it can be bitter (though this is a matter of personal preference). Finally make sure all the slices are loose before adding the onion to the pan so that you can caramelize them evenly.
