French Onion Soup -- Flour or not

I really like the cheater version I make. caramelize onions in butter, add to carton beef broth top with garlic crotons instead of bread then melt cheese of your choice over it. fast and tasty. freezes well too

TenOC wrote:
I am looking for a good french onion soup receipt. I noticed some add flour to the broth/onions. I assume to thicken the broth. Any other reason????

In France, you can use flour, or not, and water to replace the broth. About the only absolutes are carmelised onions and a melting cheese on the bread.

In the Parisian version that most Americans know, the traditional ingredient list is: flour, onions, beef broth, Comte cheese, and bread slices.

You pegged it, 10OC, the flour is used as a thickener and the ratio is about 1 TB flour per every 1-2/3 lb of onions.

Here's a modern (and flour-less) way to make it using a crock pot:

http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-french-onion-soup-in-the-slow-cooker-start-to-finish-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-215696

Comte cheese can be readily substituted with Gruyere, Swiss/Ememental or Raclette. We often find ourselves with leftover bread since there is only 2 bread eaters in the house on a regular basis so I slice French bread on the diagonal, and place it in the freezer for later use. Great for stuffings and onion soup croutons since there's less moisture in it.

The soup freezes nicely minus the croutons, as do just carmelised onions which can be used as a base for the soup or say an omelette or burger topping. Look with in the above hyperlink and you'll find a recipe for crock pot carmelised onions.


HTH

Never heard of adding flour. I've never bothered to make my own broth, don't deal with beef bones often. My mom always used the cubes, I do sometimes, other times, from a carton. From my studies, the carton and cubes are the same, the carton just has the water added in.

I like spend a lot of time caramelizing the sweet onions, usually in three batches, where the starting batch is almost dissolved by the time the third batch is nice and tender. Generous amounts of butter get used in this process.

The butter also helps thicken the broth when added with the onions.

Here's a link to a recipe I used at a Dutch Oven group and it took first place. Notice that there's no flour. Instead of making the beef broth, I used a good quality, low sodium beef broth from a carton.
Classic French Onion Soup.