Winter Soups pt2 - Crockpot French Onion Soup

 This is another one of those "keeps you warm on a cold night" soups.  It's remarkably simple to do, and mostly involves knife work and patience.

Crockpot French Onion Soup

Ingredients

• 10 + large onions or equivalent
• 4 tbsp butter
• olive oil
• salt
• 6 cups broth (see Note 1) (approx - depends on your crock pot)
• 1 cup red wine - something you like drinking
• 1 cup brandy
• 1 tbsp herbes de provence (or a mix of thyme and any other herbs you feel like)
• sliced swiss or gruyere cheese

Tools:

• Knife (make sure it's sharp, and you'll want a big slicer or santoku)
• cutting board
• frying pan
• crock pot

Instructions

1.  Slice up the onions. ALL of them.  My work process was to cut each onion in half, chop the ends, remove the brown skin, and move on until ALL the onions were prepped. Then come back and slice them into ~1/8" wide strip cuts.

Prepping out the onions

2. Working in batches in the frying pan, saute the onions until soft and browned. For each batch, use some of the butter, with enough olive oil added to get a good saute. Sprinkle salt across the top to help the process.  Cook each batch until soft and lightly browned, then add to the crock pot. Keep at this until all the onions are sauteed.  Your cooked onions will probably take up about 2/3 to 3/4 of the crock pot.

3. Add the liquids. Add the wine and brandy first, then the broth, and finally any leftover water, until your pot is well filled (NOT all the way to the top - leave at least 1" of clearance).

4. Add the herbes de provence, as well as some salt and pepper. 

5.  Set your crock pot to cook on high for ~3 hours, then reduce to low for another ~3 hours. Times are approximate.  Add salt and pepper as necessary to achieve a balance you like.

6.  Your taste will determine when the soup is ready. It should be a rich, hearty broth, with lots of onions.  To serve, ladle the soup into your bowl (a piece of toasted bread on the bottom of the bowl is traditional but not required), then place some cheese across the top and let it melt in place. 

Notes

1. The basic recipe calls for vegetable broth, but I used a mix of 1 tbsp chicken boullion, 2 beef boullion cubes, and 2 tbsp Better Than Boullion, dissolved into 2 cups water, with regular water to make up the fluid volume