My daughter hates onions.  If she seems them in a dish she will painstakingly pick out each and every one of them.  I take care to make sure they are usually finely diced and mixed thoroughly into each dish.  The two exceptions she has are French Onion Soup and Onion Rings.  I have tried to tell her they are the same onions she eats every other day that she just doesn’t know they are in her food.  The logic of children sometimes just doesn’t make sense.

I have been putting off trying to make French Onion Soup for quite a while.  I was always afraid of how difficult it would be to make.  Then I read Rachael Ray’s recipe for Oh So Good French Onion Soup on Food Network.com.  It sounded fairly simple and only 35 minutes from beginning to end.  I was hooked.

 Verdict:

This dish was delicious.  It had a bit of tang from the sherry but it was not overpowering.  Three of the four of us loved the bread floating on the top of the soup soaking up all the broth.  For my gluten-free son for his second bowl I just left his gluten-free bread off the dish.

I did add a bit of mozzarella to the dish under the Swiss cheese because my children need to see the stringy mozzarella strands to think a dish has enough cheese.

My only problem with the dish was the time.  The recipe listed 35 minutes.  It took 75 minutes for my onions to caramelize properly.  I re-read the recipe and I cooked them over medium heat in a pan but my pan was 3/4 full of onions and to cook them down to golden brown as they should be it took about 75 minutes.  It wasn’t a problem last night because my children are used to eating late but if I had wanted the meal on the table in 35-45 minutes I would have been highly disappointed.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 4 large or 6 medium sweet onions, thinly sliced
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoons dried thyme
• 1 bay leaf, fresh or dried
• 1/2 cup dry sherry
• 6 cups beef stock
• 4 thick slices crusty bread, toasted
• 2 1/2 cups Swiss cheese, shredded
• 1 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded

Directions:

1. Melt butter in a deep pot over medium heat.  Add onions to the pot. Season onions with pepper and thyme. Cook onions stirring frequently, until tender, sweet and caramel colored.This may take an hour or more.
2. Add bay leaf and sherry to the pot and deglaze the pan.
3. Add 6 cups stock and cover pot to bring soup up to a rapid boil.
4. Arrange 4 small, deep soup bowls or crocks on a cookie sheet. Preheat broiler.
5. Once soup reaches a boil, ladle it into bowls. Float toasted crusty bread on soup and cover each bowl with a mound of cheese.
6. Place cookie sheet with soup bowls on it under hot broiler until cheese melts and bubbles.