Not like  it’s cold here in South Carolina (I am not complaining), but this soup sure does warm up your insides.

Yield: 4 very generous servings

Ingredients

For the Soup

• 2 T f.o.c. (fat of choice), we used duck fat
• 4 large onions, thinly sliced (A mix of onions is great. We used 1 red onion, 1 Vidalia (sweet) and 2 yellow)
• 1 quart beef stock
• couple sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• s&p

For the Topping

• 1 c cooked and pureed/smashed cauliflower*
• 1 c Swiss, Emmentaler or Gruyere cheese, shredded
• 1 egg

Method

For the Soup

In a large soup pot, melt your f.o.c. over medium-low heat. Add the onions, thyme and bay leaves and place a lid on the pot, slightly ajar. We’re trying to “melt” the onions by the steam we create from keeping the lid on, but ajar.

Now the magic ingredient is time. You’ll want to check on the onions, every 10 minutes or so, giving them a nice swirl around the pan, until they’ve deflated in volume by about half. If you see any brown color on the onions, you need to reduce the heat.

From this point, you want to place the lid even more ajar than before. We want less steam and more evaporation. The onions cooked through via steam, so now we want to brown the natural sugars and create some flavor.

Once the onions are the color of “coffee with some cream in it”…and you’ve got some brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pot…

Add the beef stock, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pot, getting up any browned/burned onion pieces. Let it simmer for 10 minutes. You can remove the bay leaves and thyme twigs at this point.

For the Topping

Preheat your oven to 400ºF.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Use your hands to evenly spread the topping mixture over the soup. Place the topped soup in the oven for about 10 minutes, until everything looks bubbly, yummy. Stick the oven on broil for a few minutes, if you’d like.

*You can either buy the frozen stuff, thaw it out and smash or boil some fresh florets in water, drain and smash.