French Onion Soup - homemade... om nom nom!

Let me start off this post by saying how much my family LOVES French Onion soup! We have a few diners around here that make it SPOT ON and many that are just.... well... yuck!

About 5-7 years ago my mom bought a brand new oven thinking that it had a broiler... it did NOT! She was so bummed that she couldn't make our favorite French Onion soup. Just this Christmas she treated herself to an awesome broiler/toaster oven that set off this wonderful French Onion soup adventure.

We searched for about a week for the perfect (from what we could tell by reading) recipe. I stumbled upon a Food Network recipe from Melissa d'Arabian (10 dollar dinners). We tweaked it a bit as far as the onions go and some of the spices and the cheese. This is the original recipe in the link HERE.

Here is our tweaked recipe (and this is a doubled version of the one linked above since we are in a household of 4 and we knew we wanted to eat MANY MANY leftovers!)...

4 Tablespoons butter
1 large sweet red/purple onion thinly sliced
1 large white spanish onion thinly sliced
5 small yellow onions thinly sliced
salt and pepper (we used fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper)
1 cup dry red wine (we chose Explorador Cabernet Sauvignon)
2 Teaspoons flour
2 Tablespoons freshly chopped Thyme (we were short so we subbed the rest with dry and it was still yummy)
2 bay leaves
2 Teaspoons lemon juice
4 cups beef stock
4 cups chicken stock
1 baguette sliced 1-inch thick rounds and toasted until hard
Mozzarella cheese
Provalone cheese

In a Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium heat. Add sliced onions, sprinkle with salt, cover and cook until carmelized (took about 1 1/2-2 hrs). Turn the heat up and sprinkle the onions with the flour. Stir and cook for another 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the red wine. Add thyme, bay leaves, lemon juice and stock and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Ladle soup into crocks and place a single toasted baguette slice in each crock (I like to push the baguette so it's almost submerged in soup) sprinkle shredded mozzarella over the baguette slice and top the crocks with sliced provalone cheese. Broil for about 3-4 minutes. EAT ENJOY!

This turned out amazing amazing amazing! The 3 different onions in the soup made all the difference and you could most definitely taste the spices just right. I will ALWAYS make this recipe for French Onion from now on! My family is hooked!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Casandra