I am a soup girl. I love soup! Even in the middle of July, when it’s 90 degrees outside, I’ve been known to order soup in a restaurant. That air conditioning can get pretty cold, ya know, and soup just makes you feel good.
Quick and Easy French Onion Soup is our take on the classic, and it’s ready in a half hour. No complicated steps or simmering for hours…just throw it in a pot and let it do its thing. And hey, any time you can eat cheesy cheese bread AND soup is a good time. Just ask Patrick…
We ate this soup for Sunday dinner this week. A huge steaming pot of it, loads of cheese bread and a yummy wedge salad. You have to understand that Patrick (Sarah’s husband) is a pretty simple food guy. He doesn’t like complicated stuff. Meat and potatoes, cereal, just straightforward food is his jam. And two of Patrick’s very favorite foods are CHEESE and BREAD.
Put them together, and Pat is one happy boy. So he was in heaven when he saw the cheesy bread.
Dinner was awesome, and pretty soon, we’d wolfed it down. And then, we noticed that the extra cheese bread had disappeared. Like the whole plateful. The plate that sat right in front of…you guessed it…Pat.
Patrick had singlehandedly devoured TEN pieces of cheesy cheese bread. That’s right. TEN. Very impressive. (He did eat a few token lettuce leaves to prove that he will eat salad.)
He spent the next two hours on the floor, half comatose, not moving, moaning occassionally, trying to recover. But hey, I’m not judging. I could probably throw down 10 pieces of cheesy bread, too, when nobody’s looking.
Quick and Easy French Onion Soup…with lots and lots of extra cheese bread! For the Pats of this world.
Ingredients
- 3 red onions
- 3 leeks
- 3 carrots
- 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
- 2 Tbsp. cornstarch
- 3 tsp. dried thyme
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 3 cups beef stock
- 3 cups chicken stock
- 2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
- One baguette loaf
- 2 cups shredded Gruyere or Swiss cheese
Instructions
- Cut onions into thin strips. Cut leeks into rings and wash thoroughly. Cut ends off carrots and chop in half.
- Heat oil in large pot. Add onions, leeks and carrots, and sauté over medium heat until fairly soft.
- Add butter and melt. Sprinkle with cornstarch and stir until dissolved.
- Add thyme, salt and pepper.
- Add stock slowly, while stirring, and add Worcestershire and vinegar.
- Simmer 10 minutes or so. Adjust seasonings.
- While soup simmers, cut baguette into rounds and place on cookie sheet.
- Add cheese to rounds, place under broiler and broil until cheese is melted.
- Before serving, remove carrots. (Carrots can be discarded or used in another recipe.)
- Serve in soup bowls with cheesy bread on top.
Notes
*Carrots help give soup a depth of flavor. You can leave them out if desired.
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