" French Onion Fridays " @ Steves'

" French Onion Fridays " @ Steves'
Originally uploaded by photosteve.

French Onion Soup
Inspired by the fall season and despite the South's continuing heatwave, I've been slurping a lot of French onion soup. A dark and intense stock (usually chicken but sometimes beef and chicken)loaded with carmelized yellow onions and topped with a generous round of crusty bread and a blanket of Gruyere cheese, is more than mere soup, it's comfort in a bowl.

French onion soup as with most foods, has a history, a point (or two) of origin. In this instance this soup's creation is credited to King Louis XV of France, who, it is said had returned late one night to his hunting lodge, to find nothing more in the larder than onions, butter and champagne. Creative cook that he was, he mixed them together, and voila, the first French onion soup.

While French onion soup can be made with virtually any onion, most recipes call for yellow onions which turn a rich, dark brown when cooked slowly in browned butter and give French onion soup its tangy sweet flavor.

Don't underestimate that blanket of cheese on top. It should be good quality cheese (the best you can afford), broiled, baked or hand-torched to a bubbly golden brown, even almost burned in some spots, and dribbling over the edge of the soup crock.

source: http://www.emerils.com/cooking/archives/001278.html