French Onion Soup

In my very first blog post, I told I story about eating homemade French onion soup in Paris.  Since I no longer eat very much meat, I decided to make a vegetarian version, completely from scratch.

Here you can see my ingredients: 3 onions,  butter, and homemade vegetable broth (see post here), plus Swiss cheese and French bread to go on top.  The first step to making French onion soup is to prepare  the onions by slicing them thinly.

Next, place the butter in a large sauce pan and let it melt.  Add the onions. Don't worry, they will condense down.

Cook the onions until they start to brown.  I think this process took almost an hour. When they are ready they should look like this:

Then, add the vegetable broth.  I added one quart of homemade vegetable broth. My soup ended up very thick, so I would recommend adding a little more broth.  My broth was very flavorful already, but feel free to add some spices at this point, to your taste.

Let the soup simmer for about twenty minutes.  The longer you cook it, the more the flavor will develop.  I found that the soup was much better the second day, after the flavors had time to meld in the fridge overnight.

Either way, here comes the best part of French onion soup. Pour your desired serving size into an oven-proof bowl.  Place a slice of French bread and Swiss cheese on top.  Then, put the entire bowl into the oven and broil on high for just a minute.  The soup will come out with a nice gooey cheesy bread on top.  Voila, that's how you make French onion soup....from start to finish!