High Protein French Onion Soup

Name: High Protein French Onion Soup
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 2 h 30 min
Total time: 2 h 40 min
Yield: 6 Servings
Ingredients: Yellow Onions: 6; Chicken Bone Broth: 4 cups; Beef Bone Broth: 4 cups; Butter: 3 Tbsp; Dry Sherry: 1/4 cup; Black Pepper: To taste; Sea Salt: To taste; Thyme: 3-4 Sprigs; Water: 1/3 Cup

Features:

Cuisine:

French

2 Hours 40 Minutes
Serves 6
Easy

Ingredients

6 Yellow Onions
4 cups Chicken Bone Broth
4 cups Beef Bone Broth
3 Tbsp Butter
1/4 cup Dry Sherry
To taste Black Pepper
To taste Sea Salt
3-4 Sprigs Thyme
Fresh
1/3 Cup Water

Directions

Strength and endurance athletes hardly ever think about soups when it comes to planning out their daily or weekly meals. I never did, until recently that is. This high protein french onion soup is good enough to easily become one of your weekly staples. We have taken this classic recipe and “tweaked” it just a bit, in ways some might not even consider “tweaking”, to make it a low-ish calorie, high protein, and athlete friendly meal that can really add some flavor and variety to a boring meal prep regimen.

The 2nd best thing about this recipe, next to it’s fantastic flavor, is that it’s incredibly simple, and next to impossible to mess up. It’s warm, light, and full of protein and will become a staple in your meal prep recipe catalog. If you’re cooking for two, it’s also easy to double the recipe without too much room for user error.

Quick Tips

A few words of warning: this high protein soup requires patience. The key to a good French Onion soup is to make sure you allow your onions to caramelize long enough to develop a deep and dark richness. If you are a beginner in the kitchen and you haven’t yet developed your confidence, it will be tempting to say “okay, this is far enough”. Don’t be afraid to push it a little farther than what your comfortable with. Onions are incredibly cheap and if you mess up the caramelization process, it’s really no big deal to start over since that’s really the first step in the entire process.

Make sure to use a stainless steel or copper pan to encourage a high level of browning and to cultivate the “sticky” bits that form at the bottom of a pan.

Cut Calories

You can easily modify this recipe to be even lower calorie by cutting out an extra tablespoon of butter. That would save you 102 calories across the whole dish. This will affect the flavor some, but it will still be delicious if you are currently on a serious cutting or other low calorie diet that limits your options.

Add Flavor

A word on cheese. We tried and experimented with several different cheese types while fine tuning this dish: Jarselburg, Swiss, and traditional Guyere. All of them taste great, but each had slightly different nutritional values. Ultimately, our taste tests determined that a Guyere resulted in the most flavorful dish. Because Jarselburg resulted in the lowest calories, we have featured that cheese in this dish’s recipe info, though it’d only cost you 6 extra calories to switch to Swiss or 16 extra calories to switch to Guyere. Feel free to mix and match!

Steps

1 Done 5 Minutes	Preheat Oven; Prep Onions Pre-heat your oven to 425. Peel and slice your onions thinly, "French" style. No need to dice, you're looking for long, thin strips.
2 Done 30 seconds	Combine and Toss Onions, Butter, and Water In a 14 inch oven-friendly stainless steel pan, combine your chopped onions, butter, and water. Toss together so that all onions are slightly coated.
3 Done 90 Minutes	Place in Oven; Check Every 15 Minutes And Stir Place in oven. Set a timer so that you are reminded to check on your onions every 15 minutes to give them a little stir. The first time or two you pull your onions out, you will see very little browning. It will quickly ramp up as the onions dehydrate. Go for at least an hour, I like 90 minutes. If the onions dehydrate too quickly though, you risk burning, so add tiny amounts of water as necessary to ensure no burning. You want to time it so that when this step is over, these onions are "slimy", yet not sitting in any water.
4 Done 2-3 Minutes	Finish on Stove-Top Once your happy with your onions, take them out and finish them on the stove-top. Set it to high and really set that caramelization off right. Here were really trying to push for those brown bits to get stuck to the pan.
5 Done 30 Seconds	Add Sherry; Deglaze Cut the heat down a bit, give it a few seconds, and throw in your Sherry to deglaze. Using a wooden spoon, make sure you get all of those delicious brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.
6 Done	Combine Onions With Broth Combine your onions and broth into a pot with all of the broth and the sprigs of thyme.
7 Done 45 Minutes	Simmer and Reduce Simmer on low and reduce for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
8 Done	Salt & Pepper Remove from heat, salt & pepper to taste.
9 Done	Portion Bowls, Melt Cheese Place your high protein soup into an oven safe serving bowl, top with cheese, and broil on high until cheese is a beautiful brown.
10 Done	Serve Bon A' petite!