Best French Onion Soup

This will show you how to make a delicious french onion soup.

To make this you will need,

A basic amount of cooking skills

onions, the amount varies depending on how much you want, I used 6 and it fed four people for two days

2 beef broths, try to get low sodium.

a can of whole peeled tomatos

half a clove of garlic

olive oil

basil thyme or any herb you like

So to start this off we want to prepare our ingrediants so we can just dump them into the pot without worrying.

Take the half clove of garlic, you can use less or more, and cut the top and bottom and peel off the skin it works well to use the knife blade and to pick off the skin if it wont come off easily.

then you want to chop them into 1/8 in thick rounds.

This is the less than fun part, so take the onions and chop the top and bottom off and slit down the middle then peel off the skin and thick layer under neath as you will be cooking them and that layer dosent cook well, then slice each onion in half and cut into about 1/8 slices then place in a bowl, it helps alot to wear swim goggles when you cut onions so the sulfure dosent get to your eyes. open a window too and try to get as much air flow as your can if you dont have the googles

now that we have our onions and garlic pre-sliced put a big soup pot on a medium heat put some olive oil in it and you can see how much i used, once it heats up throw the garlic in you want to brown it once it is browned remove it, what this will do is give a nice garlic flavor to the oil but if you left the garlic in it will overcook and give it a bitter taste. to test the oil temp dip your finger in some water and let a drop fall in you will see it react nicely if the oil is hot enough.

After you brown and remove the garlic, put the onions in and lower the heat they have to cook down it should take a few hours, what you want is them to be soft and easy to eat, you shouldnt need any more oil during this time, but you can put in some pepper to give some flavor. also it helps to throw a lid on.

this is pretty easy what you do is take the tamatos and open it up take each one out and cut in half, make sure there are no skins left on it, and if the top where the stem connects is really stiff cut it off, then put them in a bowl, also you will notice a lot of tamato residue around the inside of the can you can take some warm water in the the can and use that to clean it out but pour it into the bowl as it just gives more flavor.

now you want to take the tomatoes that you just cut and put them and all the liquid in with the onions, then trow in some of the herbs like the aragano or basil or whatever you want, this is when you flavor it to your taste but you need to put alot in as you will be adding broth next so it will dilute the flavor, as you can see i put in a lot of each, stir and let sit for a few minutes.

so now you want to put in the beef broth, 2 is good for a basic amount but you can put in 3 as the bread later will absorb alot of the liquid, because i wanted to eat it the night i made it i turned the heat up alot and let it boil for like 30 min, but you can make this and let is stay on low for a few hours and this will allow the flavor to really develop, this would be the time to add more seasoning, and the reason we used low sodium is this gives you the ability to control the salt.

for this soup the bread is critical to get a good dinner, what you want is good bread, something that is firm but wont assorb all the liquid you put in, take the bread and cut it to say 3/8ths thickness and throw it into the oven for a few minutes to let it heat and firm up some more.

put some soup in a bowl, take the bread and put it into the soup then flip it so it has some liquid in it, i didnt get the right bread because i tried something new and it didnt work out, so use that bread as a refrence of what not to use, now put some swiss cheese on it you can put as much as you want, then you will throw it into a oven set to broil to get the cheese lightly browned and gooey, make sure you use a heat proof plate and be careful this will make the soup very hot,

if you dont like the soup with bread and cheese you can eat it plain it will taste great either way.

This is what the soup will look like depending on how you make it, i know it dosent look "fancy" but it will taste amazing, this soup is good on the first day but if you let it sit a day it just gets better, so this was my first cooking instructables please let me know what you think of it, and if you have any suggestions questions or things i should add let me know and i will try to revise it.