Onion soup is a traditional first course, which is considered a real symbol of French cooking. And just like tomato soup in the USA, cabbage soup in Russia and that pit in Thailand. But you can provide at home a small corner of France, having prepared a delicious soup.
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To prepare a traditional Parisian onion soup, you will need the following ingredients - 5-6 medium-sized onions, 3-4 tbsp. melted butter, 3 tbsp. wheat flour of the first grade, 5-6 cups of pre-cooked vegetable or meat broth, 3-4 pieces of bay leaves, salt and black pepper, 1 cup of grated hard cheese and crackers made of white bread.
First, cut the main ingredient of the soup into large cubes and lower it with a saucepan with preheated butter. Stir constantly, fry the vegetables until they become saturated golden or even brownish. Then gradually pour flour into the stewpan, but very slowly, constantly stirring so that no lumps form in the stewpan. After that, pour the whole broth, lavrushka, pepper and a little salt into the dishes, so the soup should be cooked for 30-35 minutes. At the end of this time, remove the bay leaf from the stewpan.
This ingredient will only interfere in the finished soup, and in the future it is not needed, as it gave the dish its smell.
Serve this dish should be poured into portioned cups, adding to each handful of crackers and about a quarter of the grated cheese. But do not rush to immediately bring onion soup to the table. First place the cups in a warm oven to completely melt the cheese. This dish is very tasty!
In the suburbs of Paris, in these traditional restaurants and farm eateries, onion soup is prepared a little differently - with cream and pots. You will need the following ingredients - a little (about 100-120 g) fat, 2-3 onions, salt and pepper, 3-4 glasses of water (depending on the desired density of the dish), 200-300 g of white bread crackers, 150-200 g cheese, 6-8 tablespoons greasy (25% better) cream.
Cut the lard into small pieces and fry in a saucepan until soft and fat. After that, remove the greaves from the dishes, put the onions cut into thin half rings in the stewpan, reduce the heat to a minimum and simmer the ingredients until the vegetables turn into a smoothie. Then add salt and pepper, fill the ingredients with water, bring the contents of the saucepan to a boil and reduce heat to a minimum. After that, cook the soup for another 25-28 minutes.
Pour the semi-prepared onion soup into the pots, sprinkle the liquid with a handful of cheese, add 2 tablespoons of cream to each, put the crackers and the resulting cracklings on top. After that, put the pots in the oven at a temperature of 160 ° C for 5-6 minutes, so that the ingredients warm up again and the cheese melts.
Also in France, its capital and in cities quite distant from Paris, they prepare a variety of options for traditional onion soup.
Some add pieces of chopped boiled chicken eggs, others add pieces of quail.
A very popular ingredient for this dish is also chopped celery root, slices of feta cheese instead of hard cheese, cloves of garlic, giving the soup a certain spiciness and piquancy, as well as other ingredients to taste.