French Onion Soup

There are four ingredients doing real work here and three of them are onion, time and patience. You cannot hurry the caramelising. Forty five minutes of low heat turns a pile of raw onion into something jammy and almost sweet, and that is the entire soup.

1. 1

   Melt the butter with the oil in your widest pan and add all the onion with a good pinch of salt. It will look absurd. It cooks down to a quarter.

   For this step

   • 3 tbsp (42 g) butter
2. 2

   Cook over medium low heat for 45 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so, until the onions are the colour of dark honey.

   For this step

   • 1.5 kg onions
3. 3

   Stir in the flour and cook it out for 2 minutes, then add the stock and thyme and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

   For this step

   • 1 tbsp (8 g) plain flour
   • 6 cups (1.5 litres) vegetable stock
   • 4 thyme sprigs
4. 4

   Toast the baguette slices until dry and hard. Soft bread dissolves into the soup.

   For this step

   • 8 slices baguette
5. 5

   Ladle into ovenproof bowls, float the toast on top, pile on the Gruyere and grill until blistered and brown.

   For this step

   • 150 g Gruyere
6. 6

   Let it sit for 2 minutes before eating, unless you enjoy losing the roof of your mouth.

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