French Onion Soup

Hi, this is Bianca's Mom and I am posting a recipe that was one of my husbands favorite, French Onion Soup. Of course, I don't bother with the low-fat cheese that the original recipe called for but used the Unusually Lovely Aged Swiss Cheese from Beehive Cheese that we had received in our weekly CSA share. How anyone can use low-fat cheese is beyond me since all low-fat varieties I have tried are basically tasteless. I would rather do an extra 30 minutes on my exercise bike to allow me a portion of a full-fat, deliciously smooth cheese like the one below. I also went ahead and bought some soup bones from Christensen Farms and made some homemade beef broth and then fed the marrow from the bones to our dogs. I also used some of the beef broth to make our homemade dog biscuits which our dogs, Maggie and Leah Sophia just love!


Ingredients:

2 tsp. olive oil
8 cups Walla Walla onion, thinly sliced vertically (Jacob's Cove)
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp. Redmond Sea Salt
1/4 cup dry white wine
8 cups homemade beef broth (Christensen Family Farms soup bones)
1/2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
sourdough bread, cut into 1-inch slices (Harmon's bakery), toasted
8 oz. Unusually Lovely Aged Swiss cheese (Beehive Cheese)

1. Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onions to pan and saute for 5 minutes or until tender.
2. Stir in sugar, pepper and salt. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring frequently, until onions sweat.
3. Turn heat up to medium-high and saute for 5 minutes or until onions are a golden brown.
4. Stir in wine and cook for 1 minute.
5. Add broth and thyme and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 2 hours.
6. Ladle one cup soup into 8 oven-broth bowls. Place one toasted bread slice on top of soup and then top each serving with 1 ounce of sliced cheese. Broil 2-3 minutes or until cheese begins to brown.
7. Serve immediately.
adapted from Cooking Light 2005