Slow Cooker French Onion Soup

I’ve been posting a lot of sweets on here lately, so I thought I should probably stick something savory in the mix. You know, for funsies. Also, I really like onions.

Side note: I may love onions, but I think onions hate me. It’s common knowledge that onions make you cry, but from what I’ve gathered talking to others, it seems that for most people onions just make them tear or make their eyes uncomfortable. Onions hurt me. As in crying out of pain, tears running down my cheeks, stinging and burning hurt. If I have to dice onions I have to take breaks because my eyes get to the point where they hurt so much I can’t even open them. And if I get to that point, then my eyes hurt for the rest of the day, not just while I’m cutting. This is why I gravitate towards preparations where I can just slice the onions. The less time I spend cutting onions the better.

I’m going to be honest with you. This recipe takes a long time. Like a really, really long time. The good news, though, is that aside from cutting the onions, this whole recipe is pretty hands off. No separate pans or sauteing the onions ahead of time. The slow cooker does all the work for you, albeit in many, many hours.

The thing is, the best part of French Onion Soup is those wonderfully caramelized onions. Most recipes like to tell you it takes 10-15 minutes to caramelize onions. Liars! Really nicely caramelized onions take much longer. Maybe 45 minutes to an hour. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an hour to stand in front of the stove stirring onions. That’s just asking for a toddler to find some random sticker or paper and give it to her infant sister to eat. What, that doesn’t happen in your home?

A few years ago, I discovered caramelizing onions in the slow cooker. More recently I decided to turn those sweet, meltingly delicious onions into soup.

Since the onions themselves take about 10 hours, I do them overnight. It makes dinner pretty easy the next day. Night one, chop up a bunch of onions and stick them in the slow cooker. In the morning add broth, and by dinner time you’ll have a savory soup full of onions that melt in your mouth.

For the full experience you can throw on some toasted bread or croutons and cheese and melt it down under your broiler. While cheese and I are BFFs, I would eat this soup on it’s own. It’s oddly satisfying by itself. I mean, it’s just onions, yet it fills you up. Or it fills me up, at least.

Prep time 5 mins Cook time 16 hours Total time 16 hours 5 mins Author: Joy @ The Joyful Foodie Recipe type: slow cooker, easy, soup

Ingredients

5 large sweet onions

5 Tbs butter or olive oil
1 cup white wine or chicken broth
5 cups beef broth (or vegetable broth for a no meat option)
4 sprigs thyme
3 fresh bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Cut onions in half and slice to desired width (thinner onions will cook faster).
Place butter an onions in the crock of a slow cooker.
Cook 8-10 hours on low.
When onions are done, add wine (if using), broth, herbs and salt and pepper.
Cook 8-10 hours on low or 4-6 hours on high.