Once Thanksgiving is over, I expect to eat soup at least once a week until (probably) April. My wife loves soup all year, but especially when it’s cold. And she’s an amazing cook, so I can’t complain.
She has a particular fondness for French Onion Soup (using the classic Julia Child recipe as a base). It’s delicious, and it uses a good amount of (wait for it) dry vermouth! It also uses some sherry.
Basically, French Onion Soup is almost a cocktail in its own right. It happens to pair well with cocktails as a result. It also takes forever to make, so that’s a good thing – you’ll have plenty of time for a drink.
Making the Soup
This is not going to be a step-by-step on how to make French Onion Soup, but it will tell you why you’re taking each step and why it matters. Mary was following this recipe, and it turned out great.
Step 1
Cut up a whole ton of onions as evenly as you can. You want them all to cook evenly, because you’re trying to get as much flavor as possible out of the onions without starting any kind of intense Maillard reaction and burning thin slices.
This is a good time to get the booze out as well – you’ll need it soon.
Step 2
Put all those onion slices into a big pot with melted butter and oil over fairly low heat. Cover them and leave them there. You want them to sweat out all the good sugars and juices and you don’t need to be watching them and stirring them for that to happen.
Eventually, you do want to uncover the pot, add some salt and sugar, and start stirring more frequently. Now that you’ve gotten the goodness out of the onions you’re building flavor back into them. Eat a slice once you’re done here – it’s amazing.
Step 3
Add some flour to the onions to give them a bit more body. Season them more, and add the vermouth followed by a bunch of beef stock. Let this simmer for a good long while. The alcohol in the vermouth will (mostly) cook off, but the acidity and bitterness will remain and add a ton of complexity to the broth of the soup that you won’t get from a stock alone.
You’ll notice we used Dolin Dry, which is a nice vermouth. Your vermouth need not be top-or-mid-shelf for this to work, because the flavor profile that will remain in the soup is consistent enough. A big bottle of Martini & Rossi, Rivata, or Gallo is fine for cooking. However, if you don’t keep it in the fridge, it will still oxidize. You won’t notice this nearly as much in cooking as you would drinking it alone, but it does certainly make a difference.
I recommend using the same vermouth you’d like to drink. That way, you have an excuse to make cocktails while you cook.
Step 4
Once your flavors are good in the soup, turn off the heat and stir in some cognac. More of the booze will stick around from this one and give the soup a nice punch. The flavors from the barrel mix with the earthiness of the onions and the sweetness adds another layer of rich flavor towards the finish of the soup.
Put the soup in an oven-safe bowl and then cover with croutons and Gruyere cheese. Put it all in a hot oven and watch the magic happen. The bread will soak up the soup and turn absolutely delicious. The cheese will toast and add salt and texture to the under-seasoned (intentionally) soup.
It’s a thing of beauty. Super-simple, crazy delicious, full of booze.
Making the Drink
A big, dark old-fashioned style drink would be a lot to drink with a soup so rich. So, I wanted to add some brightness to a base of cognac and dry vermouth.
I riffed on the Perfect Manhattan, adding a bit more bitters, a bit less sweet vermouth, and using cognac as the base. The cognac is quite a bit sweeter and smoother than the rye you would usually use in the drink, so the additional bitters / reduced sweet vermouth help cut through that and keep some complexity. As far as using the “near-perfect” vermouth ratio, this is probably the best application I’ve found. It’s a great drink.
