I love French onion soup. I order it in restaurants all the time. I’ve only attempted to make it once before and it was not good at all. I think I didn’t caramelize the onions long enough. Martha has a recipe for it in December Everyday Food and I decided to give it a try. Actually, it’s one of those articles where you make one item then can make several items from it. The main item is caramelized onions. Martha’s instructions are pretty simple and I felt confident making it. I did substitute 2 large Spanish onions for the 15 white onions she calls for because that’s what I had on hand. I cooked the onions with butter until they just started to brown on high. Then I reduced the heat to medium, added 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp salt and cooked the onions about another 45 minutes until they were brown and sort of sticky. This did involve a lot of stirring and required opening the windows since the kids hate the smell of onions.

To make the soup, Martha says to add one cup of the onions to 5 1/2 cups of beef broth. She suggests serving a slice of bread with melted Gruyere on the side. I added the beef broth, but also added some thyme, salt and pepper. I mixed it and brought it to a boil then turned it off and let it sit while I drove children to various places. I think that allowed the flavors to meld a bit.

For the bread, I melted Gruyere on some slices of wheat bread, but then I cut it into cubes and dumped it in the soup. I love the way French onion soup looks when you get it in a restaurant, but I find it very hard to eat – all that stringy cheese and huge clumps of bread. If I do say so myself, handling it this way was sheer genius. It was easy to eat, we got all the flavors in each spoonful, no one was wrapped in a web of cheese, and it went smoothly.

I will definitely make this again! Much easier than I expected and very delicious!