Chipotle and White Wine French Onion Soup

First, cut up your onions. If you are me, you will get less than halfway through cutting, start crying from the onion fumes, and make your husband finish. Or whoever is nearby. If no one is nearby and you’re me, uh, just stomp around cursing about fumes for a few minutes, then finish cutting up your onions. Make sure they are cut lengthwise, so you can have long wonderful onion strips in your soup when you’re done.

Dice up your garlic. Set this with the onions.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, pour in 1/2 cup of white wine and 1 tablespoon of your chipotle hot sauce (if you don’t like things to be spicy, this is all you need to add for flavor. If you do, you’ll add the rest later). Mix the two together.

Add your onions and garlic, mix around until everything in the bowl has some white wine/hot sauce mix on it.

Preheat your oven to 350F at this time.

Set your mixing bowl aside and heat your butter in a medium-sized saucepan on the stove. Once the butter is melted, pour in everything from the mixing bowl and let it all start to cookin’.

Add salt and pepper, a little more than you think you’ll need (because you’ll add broth later). Make sure you stir the onions around often to keep them from sticking to the pan too much.

Once your onions and garlic have begun to caramelize, add the rest of your white wine and the rest of your hot sauce. Cook until the wine has reduced by about a quarter, making sure to scrape up any onion bits that are clinging to the bottom of your pan. Then pour in your broth, put a lid on your pot, and let it start heading towards a boil.

While the soup is working, grab your sliced-up French bread. I brushed the white part of the bread with a little olive oil, but this isn’t a requirement. Take your slices of Swiss or Gruyere cheese and lay it on top of the French bread, with a piece or two of cheese for every slice of bread. Bake in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes, until the cheese is thoroughly melted on top and starting to get nice and bubbly. Remove from the oven and set aside if this happens before your soup is done.

When the soup boils, take the lid off, stir, set to simmer, and allow to simmer for at least ten minutes. When you’re done, spoon soup into bowls generously and put one to two slices of French bread on top.

Enjoy!