French Onion Soup

Add 2 tablespoons of butter (keeping 2 tbsp. aside for later) to a deep heavy bottomed sauté pan or dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onions, salt, thyme and bay leaf.

Sauté the onions stirring only occasionally until they caramelize. This can take up to an hour but is necessary. You must cook the onions until they shrink down to at least half their original volume and become soft and caramelized. If the onions become to dry add some of the reserved butter to help pick up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan.

Once the onions are fully caramelized, deglaze the pan with the white wine and stir up all the brown bits. Then add the remaining butter and stir in the flour. Cook for another 2 minutes then, stir in the beef stock, bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer on low for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile lightly toast the country bread slices and arrange your crock pots on a tray and put them in the bottom rack of the oven and turn your broiler on low. This will warm the bowls a bit so that the soup does not cool to quickly in a cold crock pot.

Once the soup is done simmering taste it for salt and add more if necessary. Then carefully ladle the soup in each soup crock leaving room for the toast. Place the toast on top of the soup within the crock and then top that with a good mound of the grated cheese (about 1/2 cup each). Place an oven rack in the top 1/3 of your oven toward the broiler and broil on high for about 4-5 minutes. Check on them often and rotate if necessary.

Serve immediately and be sure to warn guests of the hot bowl.

If you do not have soup crocks simply put the hot soup in a bowl and sprinkle with the grated cheese. The cheese should gently melt into the soup. Serve with the toast on the side. If serving this way I would fry the bread in a bit of butter instead of toasting it in a toaster.