French Onion Soup with Cheesy Bread

by Barry Lewis

Ingredients

French onion soup:
8 onions, 2 garlic cloves, knob of butter, tsp sugar
1tbsp olive oil, 200ml white wine, 2tbsp plain flour
1L good beef stock

gooey cheese bread:
fresh bread of your choice, 100g melted butter,
2tbsp cooked onions, handful fresh parsley,
1tbsp poppy seeds, 1tbsp dijon mustard, 200g cheese

This was a great fun recipe to try – French onion soup with a gooey cheesy tear away bread that is out of this World! I was emailed the basics for the bread recipe a few weeks back from somebody who had seen something on Pinterest and wanted me to attempt it, i’m so glad I did because it was fantastically good – just get a decent loaf trim down nearly all the way to the bottom so that it is still all held together and wedge in your filling, so, so good and easy to tweak – garlic bread will never be the same in our house! The French onion soup worked out great as I had been given so many onions from my neighbour Mary I needed to find something to do with them all! After frying the onions for ten minutes in butter and olive oil I added chopped garlic for a few minutes, flour to thicken for 1 minute, then simmered it all with some decent beef stock. After 20 minutes the soup is ready, but I left it longer so that I could crack on with making the bread – all in all a really simple recipe… follow the video and you will not go wrong, if I can make it anyone can! Oh and with the leftover soup to pad it out a bit, I plonked it in a casserole dish with some extra flour to thicken and more herbs, plus some sausages we had around the house and turned it into a french onion soup style sausage casserole – so so good.

Good luck and let me know how you get on!