THE White onion soup (French-style) is a delicious peasant dish made with onions, vegetable broth or meat broth, rustic bread and Gruyère! Today in France the “soupe à l’oignon” is a refined dish served in the most chic and elegant restaurants, but onion soup finds its origins in the poverty of former times, when exceptional dishes were created from very little. The white onion soup is a grandmother’s recipe, creamy, enveloping, savory and delicate — a true comfort food to enjoy on a cold winter evening and a delightful treat to allow yourself often. The original onion soup is prepared with beef broth; I instead made an onion soup with vegetable broth, a vegetarian version that is still just as good. This tasty, full-flavored dish is truly delicious, as are all recipes that have onions as the main ingredient, for example the Neapolitan Genovese white ragù with onions or the puff pastry tart with onions! Do you want to try the onion soup recipe too? I’m sure that with its characteristic, full-bodied flavor, its gratin and the slices of rustic bread soaked in it, it will make you fall in love!

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Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Very inexpensive
Preparation time: 10 Minutes
Portions: 2-3
Cooking methods: Stovetop
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

Ingredients to make white onion soup

2.2 lbs white onions
3.5 oz Gruyère (or fontina or Emmental, grated)
4 slices bread (rustic)
4.25 cups vegetable broth (or beef broth)
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp all-purpose flour (heaping)
to taste salt
to taste black pepper

Tools

Saucepans
Stovetop
Mandoline

Steps

Peel the onions, rinse them and slice them thinly with a mandoline. Melt the butter in a pan, add the onions, season lightly with salt and let them wilt.
Add the flour, stir, then start adding the broth little by little, cooking everything over low heat and adding more as needed until it is all used up.
(I prepared a vegetable broth by boiling for 45 minutes about 6 1/3 cups of water (approximately 1.5 liters) with one onion, one zucchini, one carrot, one potato and one tomato, and seasoning with salt. You can replace the vegetable broth with beef broth by adding meat to the ingredients above and extending the cooking time for at least 2 hours and 30 minutes).
Bring the onions to cooking,
when they become soft and creamy, add a sprinkle of pepper, transfer the soup to ovenproof dishes and place the slices of bread on top — I used my homemade bread. Sprinkle with grated cheese (you can use Gruyère, Emmental, fontina or Maasdam) and finish in the oven at 392°F for 10 minutes, just long enough to brown the surface.
The onion soup is ready; serve it immediately, still hot and delicious.