How to Make the Best French Onion Soup Ever. Leave it to the French to make a glorious, silky soup from a vegetable as ordinary as an onion. French Onion Soup Chicken Bake' title='French Onion Soup Chicken Bake' />One of our fave comfort foods And preparing it in the slow cooker makes it that much easier. Find this slowcooker French onion soup at Chatelaine. French Onion Chicken and Rice Bake recipe chicken, french onion dip, cream of chicken soup, cheddar cheese, rice and french fried onions use rotisserie chicken. But if its so easy to make, why are we often subjected to shoddy bowls of thin, tasteless onion water Or, worse, acrid burnt onion broth Or even worse a cloudy, oily mess Like many straightforward dishes, the outcome relies on nailing the technique and deploying just the right ingredients. So the Epicurious Test Kitchen merged the best parts of the recipes on our site to create Our Favorite French Onion Soup. Cooking the onions for a very long time over low heat mellows their flavor and makes a truly delicious soup. Get French Onion Soup Recipe from Food Network. Heat broiler. Bring lowsodium beef broth and caramelized onions to a simmer over medium season with coarse salt and ground pepper. Top thicksliced country bread. French Onion Soup Chicken CrockpotHeres how we cracked the code on this time honored recipe Pair beef broth with white wine and skip the flourLets start with the foundation for our soup. Weve seen recipes that use beef broth, chicken broth, or a mix of the two. Weve also seen recipes that call for red wine, white wine, or no wine at all. Our taste tests revealed the combination of an all beef broth with white wine as the clear winner, as used in this Gourmet French Onion Soup. The beef broth obviously home made is best, but store bought works too adds an underlying richness to the soup, and we favored the lightness and acidity that white wine brings to the table. We also tested thickening the soup with flour as well as omitting it from the recipe. We preferred the no flour version, as used in this Bon Apptit rendition, which provides a beautiful clear broth without muddying the sweet and savory flavors of the soup. Red wine vs white wine in French Onion Soup. Photo food styling by Rhoda Boone. Caramelize your Vidalia Onions Slowly. As we read through your comments on the French Onion Soup recipes on the site, we heard you loud and clear More onions After all, its not called Broth Soup or Cheesy Bread Soup. So we took a cue from another Bon Apptit recipe and upped our onion to broth ratio to let the main ingredient shine. We also found many recipes that just called for onions. But what kind of onions make for the best soup We tried caramelizing red, yellow, and Vidalia onions andshockerthe sweet Vidalias came out on top. Just a sprinkle of sugar and salt and heat transform these sweet onions into sweet, nutty, silky strands of pure gold. But perfectly caramelized onions take time. Undercook your onions, and youll miss out on all that the savory sweetness. Some recipes call for cooking them for as little as 1. Cook them too quickly over heat thats too high, and you risk burning them and adding a scorched, bitter taste to your soup, so resist the urge to speed up this step. This French Onion Soup with Comt calls for cooking the onions for about an hour, which we thought was just right. When your onions are an even, deep golden brown like the kind of tan everyone wanted in the 8. Dont Clobber Your Soup with Herbs. We initially tried adding a bundle of rosemary, thyme, and bay leaves to our soup, but found the rosemary to be a bit overpowering. The combination of thyme and bay leaves found in this recipe for Onion Soup with Loads of Thyme and Giant Gruyre Crostini was really well balanced, lending a subtle herbaceous flavor and aroma. Cheese test for French Onion Soup. Photo food styling by Rhoda Boone. Go for Gruyre. Were not naming any names, but we know some people who eat French Onion Soup mostly for the blistered, melty, cheesy cap on top. Low Fat Salad Dressing. So of course we had to give this element as much attention as the rest of the soup. And, just like the onions, many recipes call for generic Swiss cheese. Again, we asked, What kind of Swiss cheese We narrowed it down to two contenders Emmentaler and Gruyre. We tried them separately and mixed together. The slightly sweet, salty, nuttiness of Gruyre as found in this recipe won us over and was chosen to adorn our soup. Our Favorite French Onion Soup. Photo by Charles Masters, food styling by Sue Li. Finish with a splash of sherry. Many recipes include brandy in the cooking process or to finish the soup. We tried adding a touch to our brew, but it was a little too sweet. So we took a tip from Mixed Onion Soup in Sourdough Bread Bowls and tried finishing our bowls with a splash of dry sherry. The sherry complements the nuttiness of the Gruyre beautifully and adds a bright finish to the soup, yet the raw alcohol flavor gets mellowed by the warm broth. All in all, its the perfect finishing touch.