The other day, we noticed that some of our onions were starting to go bad. Not really bad, as in, you have to throw them out, but just getting soft, or needing several layers peeled off before use. To us, that meant we needed to find a use for a lot of onions, fast. We trimmed a couple and placed them in a bag in the refrigerator to use later in the week and selected out the ones that looked the best for later use, but, we still had three medium onions to use, ideally that day. We thought about Alsace Onion Tart, but then we remembered we had a recipe that covered two French onion soups, a Normandy Onion Soup, and this one, Lyonnaise Onion Soup. Don’t worry, fellow scratcher, we’ll tell you how to make both.
This recipe comes from Cheese, by Michel Roux, and, while all the recipes did involve cheese, this one used just a bit of cheese. While it originally listed all the ingredients by weight — which we used, by the way — we convert those weights into volume measurements for you.
Lyonaise Onion Soup
Ingredients
- 70 g unsalted butter, divided (5 Tbs)
- 400 g onions, finely sliced (about 3 medium)
- 250 g white wine, divided (1 cup)
- Thyme sprig,bay leaf, and a few parsley stalks, tied together
- 30 g all-purpose flour (2 Tbs)
- 650 g vegetable stock (2 2/3 cups)
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 12-16 slices baguette sliced on the bias 1/4 inch thick
- 70 g 5 Tbs heavy cream (5 Tbs)
- 30 g grated Gruyere, aged Cheddar, or Comte (1/4 cup)
Instructions
- Melt 40 g (3 Tbs) of the butter in a large skillet over medium heat until foamy. Add onions and fry, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 20 minutes. Add 150 g (2/3 cup) wine and herbs, and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
- In a large saucepan, melt butter in the flour over medium heat, stirring continuously, until it bubbles. Continue to cook and stir flour and butter for 2 minutes to make a light-colored roux.
- Add stock to the roux, whisking if necessary to avoid lumps. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
- Add onion mixture to stock and simmer an additional 15 minutes, skimming as needed. Remove herbs, season with salt and pepper to taste, and keep hot.
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Toast baguette slices and set aside.
- Divide the wine among oven-proof bowls, ladle in the soup, and spoon cream on top. Top soup with toasted baguette and sprinkle with grated cheese.
- Bake until cheese is melted.
- Serve immediately.
Ingredient discussion:
To make Normandy Onion Soup, simply replace the white wine with a medium cider and proceed according to the directions. That’s it.
Now, we didn’t have a thyme sprig, so we substituted about 1/4 tsp of dried thyme. The same went for the parsley stalks; there, we used a pinch of dried chervil, because it has a similar taste. In both cases, we knew that we’d never get them out of the soup, but, that’s okay. For the wine, we chose Barefoot brand Pinot Grigio, simply because we like it. You should choose a wine that you like. Finally, we didn’t have a baguette, but we did have bread fresh from the oven, so we used a couple of pieces of that, instead.
Procedure in detail:
Cook onions. Melt 40 grams (3 Tbs) of butter in a large skillet until foamy. You want a large skillet so that, once you add the onions, they’ll be in a thin layer and cook faster. Add the onions, stir, and spread into an even layer, and cook, stirring often, until golden, about 20 minutes. While the onions were cooking, we measured out the 150 g (2/3 cup) of white wine, added 1/4 teaspoon of thyme and a pinch of chervil (remember, we didn’t have sprigs, so we substituted) and a bay leaf. Once the onions are golden, pour in the wine and herbs and simmer, stirring and scraping the pan, for about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.
Make roux. Place the remaining 30 g (2 Tbs) of butter in a large saucepan along with the flour and set over medium heat. Stir continuously until the butter melts and mixes with the flour and starts to bubble. Once bubbling, stir occasionally, scraping the bottom of the pan, for 2 minutes.
Add stock and simmer. You might need a whisk for this — we did. Slowly add the stock to the roux, stirring or whisking the entire time. Continue whisking until no lumps remain, then bring to a boil to thicken. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes to eliminate the raw flour taste.
Add onions and simmer. Scoop the onions into the simmering, thickened stock, and continue to simmer, stirring occasionally, uncovered, for an additional 15 minutes.
Remove herbs. If, as we did, you used some dried herbs, you won’t be able to scoop those out, but do scoop out the bay leaf. If you had a thyme sprig, or fresh parsley stalks, scoop those out, too. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed. Keep hot.
Make cheese toast. We don’t have oven-proof soup bowls, so we improvised. We sliced off a couple of pieces of bread and used a large cutter to cut out rounds. Each round was buttered on both sides and placed on a griddle (we don’t have a toaster, either) over medium heat. After about 5 minutes, if the bread is toasted, flip, and toast the other side. About a minute before the toast is done, sprinkle grated cheese on top, and let melt while you dish up the soup.
Serve. The original recipe called for adding wine to the bowls, then the soup, followed by the cream, but we just stirred the remaining 100 g (1/3 cup) of wine into the hot soup and ladled it into bowls. Next, we poured (right from the carton) about 1 tablespoon of heavy cream into each bowl of soup, and topped it with our now-melty cheese toast. Then, it was on to the table.
We liked this soup. Perhaps it’s not quite as good as the more traditional French onion soup (at least if the French onion soup is made well), but, for an onion soup you can have on the table in under an hour it’s remarkably good. We’ll definitely be trying the Normandy version sometime in the future. Four stars.
