I’ve become the team leader for the Spark People cooking light group – so our newest thang is to try and make 1 or 2 recipes from the current issue. We ended up thinking of a couple – but I ended up with the Chocolate Coconut Macaroons (review/recipe coming soon) and Crock Pot French Onion soup.

Note: cutting onions, is the suck!

As anyone who knows me or my cooking knows, i don’t follow recipes “exactly”. I’m always missing an ingredient, don’t like or someone else doesn’t like an ingredient… so almost every recipe gets a “change”. This one was no different. Another team member had made this dish first and suggested a splash of alcohol, which lead me to “research” french onion soup.

Which lead to:

Using 4 different kinds of onions, swapping out wine for some of the stock (learning the difference between stock and broth), finding a new kind of stock “goo” that you add hot water to.. learning about caramelizing onions in the crock pot and that you don’t need the sugar and in the end, all in all an ok soup.

French Onion Soup – Slow Cooker

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 6 thyme sprigs
• 1 bay leaf
• 5 pounds large sweet onions, vertically sliced (about 16 cups)
  • 3 shallots
  • 2 red onions
  • 3 sweet onions
  • 2 yellow onions
  • Or whatever combo gets you to 5 pounds, this filled my 6 qt crockpot to the top
• 1 tablespoon sugar (
• 6 cups unsalted beef stock (such as Swanson)
• 1 1/2 cups red wine
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 24 (1/2-ounce) slices whole-grain French bread baguette (use the CL recipe!)
• 5 ounces Gruyère cheese, shredded (about 1 1/4 cups)

Directions

1. Place butter, thyme, and bay leaf in the bottom of a 6-quart electric slow cooker. Add onions; sprinkle with sugar. Cover and cook on HIGH for 8 hours.
2. Remove thyme and bay leaf; discard. Add stock, wine, vinegar, salt, and pepper; cook, covered, on HIGH for 30 minutes. 3 – 4 hours
3. Preheat broiler to high.
4. Arrange bread in a single layer on 2 baking sheets; broil 30 seconds on each side or until toasted. Place 1 cup soup in each of 12 (8-ounce) ramekins or ovenproof bowls, or follow freezing instructions. Top each serving with 2 bread slices and about 2 tablespoons cheese. Place 6 ramekins on a jelly-roll pan; broil 2 minutes or until cheese melts and begins to brown. Repeat procedure with remaining 6 ramekins, bread slices, and cheese