Soupe à l'Oignon

When discussing our holidays back around Thanksgiving, Ann requested that I make her French onion soup, known as soupe à l'oignon in France, for Christmas Eve. I had already had this soup in mind, but not necessarily for Christmas Eve, because we have a 50-pound sack of onions in the pantry to use before they go bad. I don't think that she realized that to make a great batch of this soup is a fair amount of work.

It's a favorite soup of mine that never fails to remind me of all the times that my mother and I made it. When I was a boy, she would put me to work peeling and chopping the onions after which I would take turns keeping an eye on the caramelizing onions, helping to keep them from sticking and burning to the bottom of the pan.

Soupe à l'Oignon with Gratinéed Crouton

Although I have made onion soup in a single day, I decided to spread it into a three-day process, if for no other reason that to have the refrigerator to aid in removing the fat from the soup.

Day 1: Ready to Roast Beef Soup Bones

Day 1: Roasted Beef Soup Bones

Day 1: Beef Cheek Meat Ready to Braise

French onion soup wants to be made with a great braising cut of beef. My favorites for braising are, in order: cheek meat, shin meat, and chuck. The cheeks are the most wonderful cut on the animal and we used to serve a lot at the restaurant. Customers would never order them by the name "cheeks" so I adopted a bit of subterfuge in calling them nuggets. We would braise them until tender, refrigerate them to solidify them, then roll them in panko.

At service, we would fry them until the panko was golden and top them with a sauce made from the braising liquid. They appeared on the menu as "crispy beef nuggets" and would sell out pretty instantly. So good were they that regulars, having tasted them once, would not make the mistake of passing them up the next time that they appeared on the menu.

I was thrilled to be able to find cheek meat in my grocery for my Christmas Eve onion soup.

Day 1: Deglazing Browned Beef Cheeks with Pinot Noir

On Day 1, I roasted about five pounds of beef soup bones (split knuckles) and at the same time, braised four pounds of beef cheek meat in Pinot Noir. I transferred the soup bones (less the rendered fat) and the braised cheek meat to a big soup pot and covered everything in water. The soup pot went into the fridge overnight. The water let all the fat rise above the bones and meat so that the following day, I could remove the solidified fat before starting in on the stock.

Day 2 saw me add some thyme branches to the defatted stock and put the stockpot on the stove to cook down for several hours. I removed and discarded the soup bones and thyme, then pulled out the cheek meat. After the cheek meat cooled, I shredded it and pulled out and discarded any remaining fat. The shredded meat went back into the stock and the stock pot went back in the refrigerator, once again for the liquid fat to solidify on top.

Day 3: Fifteen Pounds of Onions to Peel

Day 3: Sliced Onions Ready to Caramelize

Day 3: Caramelized Onions with a Little Flour

Day 3 saw me defat the stock once again and then start in on the onions. You can see that fifteen pounds of onions mounded up and over the top of my pot, then cooked down to about a quarter of a pot full. The caramelization process took several hours. I inverted a skillet over the pot at first to help steam the onions. Quickly, the pot filled about two thirds full of water.

At this point, I uncovered the pot and let it cook on fairly high heat to evaporate the water, stirring every few minutes. Gradually, the onions went from white to cream to yellow to lightly brown to golden brown. The more caramelized the onions became, the more often I had to stir.

Once the onions became fully caramelized and very dry, I stirred in three heaping spoonsful of flour and let that cook for a couple of minutes. Then I deglazed the pan with a quarter bottle of Champagne before adding the onions to the pot of hot beef stock.

The soup cooked for an additional ninety minutes before I seasoned and served it.

Christmas Eve: 2010 Pinot Noir to Celebrate

Onion soup is naturally sweet from all the concentrated sugars in the onions. All this sugar wants a fairly acidic wine to help cut through the richness. Champagne is a great pairing, but then, we live in a world-class Pinot Noir region, so it was Pinot Noir for us. This 10-year old wine has mellowed enough to work with the mellow long-cooked flavors of the soup, while still having a lot of acid to scour our tongues and make each spoon of soup a pleasure.

While there is nothing difficult about making onion soup, it is somewhat labor intensive. But for a special occasion for a special girl, it was totally worth the effort.