– Hey, guys, Chef Billy Parisi here Thank you so much for stopping by my channel
Today I'm gonna show you how to make a classic French onion soup with homemade crostinis, Gruyere cheese, and fresh thyme When make onion soup, traditionally I like to use a couple different onions I like to use yellow I like to use white Sometimes I even use red onions
But you wanna remove the ends, you wanna cut it in half, and then you wanna take the time to peel that outer shell, which is actually just windburn from when the onions come up above the ground And next, you wanna slice them in half Not too thick, not too thin Maybe about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick If you do it too thick, then you've got these gigantic onions in your soup
And if you do it too thin, you can't take the time to devote to caramelizing the onions to get them full of flavor So once you're done slicing 'em, just gonna put 'em in a bowl Like to keep all my food in one place, or like we used to say in the culinary world, mise en place And I'm using a big rondeau pot, which is a sort of a shorter but wider pot It helps cook the onions more evenly
We're gonna add in a little bit of butter Okay, we're gonna add in all the butter Once it begins to melt is when you wanna add in your sliced onions I know this is gonna look like a lot of onions, but trust me, they're gonna cook down significantly And honestly, they may end up being 1/8 or 1/10 of what this pot is once they're done cooking
It seriously takes some time to caramelize You need to constantly stir, and you need to keep it over low to medium heat And really just wanna be focused on getting it brown, getting all those great colors in place on our onions While they are cooking, we're gonna smash some garlic You do this by putting one hand over the other, pressing it down, and this sort of removes the cloves from the bulbs
And from there what you wanna do is trim the ends off, which is sort of just like the stem, if you will And after you get done doing that, a really easy way to remove the clove from the peel on the outside is just by using the back end of your knife and sort of just pressing down, smashing it a little bit It breaks up the garlic, but it's no big deal, because, honestly, we're gonna mince them anyway So remove the garlic clove from the outside peel And once that is done, it's really when you wanna start mincing
And I like to have it pretty finely minced I don't like big chunks of garlic in my onion soup, or anything, for that matter So once it is kind of to that very small rice, think of maybe Mediterranean couscous, we're gonna put it in a bowl and sort of put it by the onions We're not gonna throw it in yet Just wanna keep it in our general vicinity
And we wanna continue to caramelize our onions We've been doing this for about 10 to 12 minutes so far And once they start to get a little bit of brown on them, like it looks here, I actually like to add a little bit of sugar in there This can help further caramelize the onions And in addition, it can also help add some nice sweetness that perhaps maybe your onions won't give off while being cooked
So just stir that in Continue to get them really, really nice and brown While those are browning, we're going to add in the garlic, because we're actually maybe five to 10 minutes away from this being cooked completely before we can add in some of the other ingredients (upbeat jazz music) It's very important to deglaze your onions with red wine And like I always say when it comes to cooking with wine, if you would not drink it, then you better not cook with it
And I use a Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet is a little bit of a drier red wine, but along with the sweetness from the sugar and the onions, it should balance out really, really nicely And go ahead and give yourself a little taste, or pour an even bigger glass if you'd like, just to make sure that it's a tasty enough wine that you wanna cook with So what we're gonna do is deglaze the pot with some of that red wine, about two cups worth And don't worry, because a lot of it's going to cook out over that medium heat
It's going to evaporate and soak into the onions, but it's gonna really provide a ton of wonderful flavor for our onion soup Once there's just a little bit of liquid left, what we're gonna do now is add in some beef stock Sometimes in the past, I've done 1/2 chicken stock, 1/2 beef stock I'm going all beef this time, just looking for some really rich flavors It's starting to get cold outside, and I want a really, really hearty soup
So we wanna cook that over low heat and simmer it And in the meantime, what we're gonna do is slice up a French baguette about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inches thick These are gonna act as our croutons or sort of our top bread crostinis that go on our soup And I always like to try the end piece, because, well, bread is in front of me, so why not? Add the crostinis to a sheet tray lined with parchment paper And I always use parchment paper here just so nothing sticks or none of that tinny flavor comes off the metal onto my food
And then once you've spaced everything out on the sheet tray like little soldiers, I've got a little bit of melted butter here, and I'm gonna take the time to brush each little piece of bread with the unsalted melted butter It's always important to use unsalted when using butter so you can season it yourself and you have all the control there Once the crostinis are all buttered up, I'm going to season them with a little bit of kosher salt, which is a little bit bigger salt Tastes better than iodized You might use a little bit more
And next, some fresh ground black pepper We wanna make sure these crostinis taste good Even though our soup will be tasty and full of flavor, every step and every level of every recipe you make should be seasoned and taste well And, of course, Gruyere cheese It's incredibly traditional to use with French onion soup
It is expensive You're looking at at least about 1899 a pound But the incredible intense flavor from it, it's aged in caves and it's just so good and really provides a lot of body, a lot of depth, and some unbelievable flavor to French onion soup So I had a half extra left over in the fridge, which I used that and bought a whole 'nother one, so, yeah, I'm in for about 16 bucks worth of Gruyere cheese
Gonna simply put it in a bowl and set it to the side Go back to our crostinis, and they are done They were in the oven at 375 degrees for about 12 to 15 minutes You just wanna get them brown and toasted up What we're gonna do is set those to the side, and while our onion soup is still cooking, I'm gonna mince up some fresh thyme
I don't mind using dry herbs when making soup, but I really love using fresh herbs And when it comes to using fresh herbs in anything, you wanna finish it with fresh herbs Dry herbs take some time to reconstitute That's why you put them in at the beginning, and you use fresh herbs at the end So once you get that fine mince, and it's okay to use the stem
There's a lot of flavor in the stem, but if you fine mince it, you're gonna be in good shape We're gonna pour it into our onion soup We're also going to give it a quick stir And now we're going to season it with kosher salt And season high
Sprinkle it all over the place Get it nice and mixed in And, of course, some fresh ground pepper Going to give it a little stir And next, you wanna taste it
It's incredibly important to taste You season once, you taste twice Taste it, season it, taste it again If it needs more seasoning, fine I found that it desperately needed some sort of vinegar, so I added some balsamic vinegar, and it really intensified the flavor of the soup and made it extremely well-balanced
And I think once you get a taste, you're gonna love it as well I'm gonna pour our soup into a couple little soup crocks I'm gonna try to show you what the final product will look like We're gonna top off with a few of those crostinis we made And next, pile on high the Gruyere cheese, as much as you wanna put in there
We're gonna put it under the broiler for about three to four minutes You just want it to get it nice and browned and definitely melty That sort of just runs all through that soup, and it's just oh so delicious And be careful, because these soup crocks are extremely hot That's why when you get it in a restaurant, it's usually on a plate with a doily
So be careful when touching it I know I used my fingers, but I've got some seriously thick calluses these days And last but not least, you wanna top off with some fresh thyme All right, guys, our French onion soup is finished You saw me top it off with a crostini that we made and some Gruyere cheese
Gruyere is traditional when making French onion soup Don't use Swiss cheese unless you're trying to save a few bucks, because, honestly, the Gruyere really enhances the flavor of this and, honestly, just takes it to that next level We're gonna give it a little bit of a taste here Man, it's super good Really rich in flavor
You kinda get the complexity from the caramelized onion, little bit of that sweetness there, some of the saltiness from the stock, and obviously the salt we added And you get a really nice finish at the end with that balsamic vinegar Honestly, that was a game changer It's really, really good That's all I got for today, man
Thanks for checking out my video Obviously, enjoy a glass of wine with this French onion soup after you make it And please be sure to subscribe to my channel There's a Subscribe button below the video and somewhere floating around this video I haven't figured out where I'm gonna put it yet
I've got a lot of recipe videos Some are close-up, some are a little bit farther away, some are me on camera talking directly to you But I would love the sub, and we'll catch up with you next time, okay See you guys
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