Instant Pot French Onion Soup to Die For!

I’m going to start this blog off with an Instant Pot recipe I tried just last night.  I modified this recipe from another site for my tastes.  French onion soup is by far one of my favorites, but I just hated how long it took to cook conventionally.  It was such a pain.  My Instant Pot was delivered yesterday, so I decided to give it a whirl and see how it did with this.  It was a DREAM!  If you’ve ever made French onion soup the conventional way, you’re going to love this! Here it goes…

• 2 Purple onions sliced
• 1 Yellow onion sliced
• 2/3 Stick of butter
• 1 Tbsp of oil (Vegetable, olive, it’s up to you)
• 4 Cups of water, mixed while boiling with 5tsp of Better Than Bullion Beef Stock
• 1 Tsp Dried thyme
• ½ Tsp Garlic powder
• 1 Tsp Salt
• ½ Tsp Pepper
• 1 Cup of red wine
• Enough croutons to create a layer at the top to put your cheese on so it doesn’t sink into the soup
• Enough slices Gruyere cheese to cover the top of the crocks you’ll put the soup in.
• Paprika to garish.

First, you want to pre-heat your oven to broil.  Then you set your Instant Pot to ‘sauté’ and put the butter and oil into the pot.  Once it’s all melted, put the onions in and sauté them until they’re nice and caramelized.  This should take about 10-15 minutes to do while getting them covered in the butter and oil.  It’s some work, so be sure to make sure they’re coated.  It will look like a lot of onions at first, but they’ll cook down.  I mix all the dry ingredients into the measuring cup that I used to make my bullion so that they’re ready to go in all together when they go in the Instant Pot while the onions are cooking.  Once the onions are nice and soft, turn the sauté function off and pour the bullion and mixed ingredients into the Instant Pot.  Then the cup red wine.  Close your Instant Pot and set it in manual control on high pressure for nine minutes.  When cooking is complete, do a quick release of the steam.

Now that your French onion soup is ready, ladle it into your crocks.  Use the croutons to create a layer that your cheese can sit on. Lay the Gruyere cheese across the top of your crock so that it will seal when it melts as if it is a lid. Sprinkle a little paprika on top of the cheese for garnish.  Place your crocks onto a foil lined baking sheet and put them in your pre-broiled oven for five minutes.  (Trust me, foil line that sheet, people. It’s gunna get messy!) When that five minutes is up, you have greatness in a bowl!  Be careful, though, it’ll be rather hot.  That cheese and the croutons are going to lock in the heat.  The size of your crocks will really determine how many servings this will make.  I have rather large ones and it made four servings. 

Buon appetito! Mangiate!

-Brian