French Onion Soup

Use your slow cooker to make warm and cozy french onion soup a reality during the week.

I shared a recipe for crockpot mashed potatoes back in November and in that post I mentioned something about not loving my crockpot. Right after that, I spun around and asked Santa to bring me a shiny new slow cooker for Christmas (my old one was olllld… 17 years old, I think) because, seriously, why haven’t I embraced crockpot cooking in the six-plus years I’ve been writing this blog?

The answer comes down to one simple thing – I’ve had a lot of bad crockpot meals, although most of those meals happened before I started this blog and before I had a good grasp on cooking.

So I decided to challenge myself and get back on the slow cooker horse starting with a classic french onion soup after learning that a slow cooker is a great hands-off way to caramelize onions. Normally, you’d have to spend at least 45 minutes standing over the stove to get the same result making french onion soup a great dish to make on the weekend, but a terrible one for mid-week. Who has time to caramelize onions on a Tuesday night? Slow cooker to the rescue!

Here’s the deal: slice and place the onions in the slow cooker the night before you want to make the soup. The slow cooker needs at least 10-12 hours to get the job done, which means you get your evening back and while you’re snoozing away, your slow cooker is slowing caramelizing the onions so when you get up in the morning they’re done. At this point, you can keep them in the refrigerator until you’re ready to make the soup, which now will only take about 30 minutes start to finish.

Hello, weeknight french onion soup.

Seriously, all there’s left to do is simmer the onions in beef broth. While that’s happening you can toast the bread and slice the cheese before ladling some of those sweet caramelized onions in beef broth into bowls. Top them with the bread and cheese and then let them sit under the broiler for a few minutes.

That’s it.

The toast soaks up all the brothy goodness and the cheese – that cheese! I am in love with the ooey-gooey gruyere cheese. One bite and you’ll feel like you’re sitting in a French bistro far, far away from your normal it’s-just-another-Tuesday-night situation.

All thanks to a slow cooker.

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