Alton Brown's French Onion Soup

The opening scene to the episode A Bowl of Onion has Alton Brown sitting on a park bench in a white suit talking about onions and their history with a hint of slow, Southern accent. Besides being an homage to one of my favorite all-time movies, this episode can now claim to have one of my favorite Alton Brown recipes.

I'm sorta new to the whole French Onion soup thing. I've seen it on menus but never ventured to try it for some unknown reason. Even when I saw Alton making it for the first time, I didn't rush to try my hand at it. But its simplicity did pique my interest. Eventually I gave the soup a try, all be it in restaurants rather than making it myself, but I wanted to see if I enjoyed it enough before trying my hand at it.

My first encounter with French onion soup was good enough to make me realize I liked it. Unfortunately, the rest of my bowls fell miserably short. I've never found one place that made it to a level I would call great. That's when I decided to venture into making the soup myself. I knew with the right recipe, I would be able to create a tempting and yummy version of this soup. There would be no question where I would turn to find my information on the dish. My culinary guru, AB. To my surprise, and luck, the episode aired within days of my calling to make it.

After ample prep time from watching the episode (several times, I must admit), I ventured into the world of making French onion soup for the first time. I hoped that it would be a pleasant journey. In my zeal to make this soup properly, I even purchased a couple of soup crocks. I was now committed to making it, no turning back!

I started by reading the reviews of the recipe. It seems this is only a 4-star recipe for Alton, unlike many, many of his other recipes with a 5-star rating. The biggest complaint from the reviewers was the soup turned out very, very sweet. Even in the Ask Alton section of the DVD collection, this problem arose in a question. Alton's suggestion was to reduce the sugar level in the recipe. This scared me a bit. I didn't want a sweet soup. But I trusted this recipe because in all of the years I've made dishes from the show, Alton has yet to steer me wrong.

From perusing the recipe the only thing that I could see making the soup "sickeningly sweet" would be the apple cider. And several reviewers offered the suggestion of the reducing the apple cider. At this point, I was contemplating the wine too. I admit when it comes to vino, I'm clueless. Not much of a wine drinker, but do know some types of wine are sweet and others are not. Could this be the problem? I don't know, but I selected a Chardonnay, plain and ordinary and hoped for the best.

Next from the depths of my mom's collection of stuff she never parts with, came the electric skillet. Using an electric skillet was Alton's chosen method to cook the onions and the soup. Fortunately, I didn't have to purchase one. Instead I used my mom's old skillet. Yep, the shiny, aluminum, vintage cooking implement hadn't seen the light of day in years. Mom can't even remember how old the thing is, she thinks it was her grandmother's. Circa 1960s? I do remember some awesome pot roasts being cooked in it, but that about all mom ever did with it.

Everything seemed to be in place. Soup crocks, check. Retro electric skillet, check. Now to the onions. At the ol' megamart, I could only find red onions and some yellow onions with the moniker "sweet" on their label. I'm always skeptical of onions called sweet. My experience is usually the opposite. Outside of the beautiful and lushoius OSO Sweets and Vidalias, I rarely find a sweet onion worth a hoot. But I scarfed up a few of the yellow "sweets" anyway and a lot of the reds.

On to cooking. The tear level came in very high when I sliced into those so-called sweet onions. Just as I thought. But I plugged through, sacraficing my tears for some good soup. Then the moment of truth, the onions met the skillet. Hissing and sizzling, I lidded it up and walked away. Here's another place many of the bad reviews told of sorrow. Some claimed it took longer than the 45 minutes to an hour as AB instructs.

Fourty-five minutes later, the kitchen smelled of cooking onions. An aroma I like, by the way. Lifting the lid I found 95 percent of the onions caramelized and deep mahogany. I gave them a stir and five more minutes to reach perfection. Now, the wine. Alton told us to put enough wine on the onions to cover. The printed instructions said two cups. One of my biggest complaints about Food Network recipes and the ones from the shows are there are contradictions a lot of times. I opted for AB's instructions and added wine to barely cover the onions and waited for the syrup to form.

A few moments on high and the syrup was before me. I added the beef consume and chicken broth. At this point I decided to forgo the apple cider and and replaced that 10oz with the same amount of chicken broth. In went the bouquet garni and the dial on simmer. As I waited, the bread rounds toasted up and the Fontina was shreaded.

I only waited 15 minutes because by now the smell was making me drool. I quicked ladled some soup in the crock, placed the bread and cheese on and broiled it for a minute or two.

My bowl of onion was ready.

The verdict?

First, it was not sickeningly sweet. Second, the best French onion soup I've had. I know it kinda conceited to brag on my own cooking... but, come on! This was super. No, it was fanastic. I may never be able to eat French onion soup, other than this one, ever again because of this experience.

Guess I better head over to Food Network and put my review in for Alton's French Onion Soup. Five stars from me, for certain.