Vegan French Onion Soup with Mushrooms

Today is the day of days when you will finally finish reading that book that’s been sitting on your bedside table for weeks. Or the day you will watch that one documentary that’s been on your watchlist for ages. Why? Because today we are cooking an onion soup that is not complicated but requires patience. While the onions are frying in the pan and the soup is simmering and baking, there is enough time to devote to your to-do lists.

Our soup is strongly inspired by the French classic soupe à l’oignon, which is covered with slices of bread or crôutons and gratinated with cheese at the end. Heavenly! Historically, the gratinated cheese layer was added later and balances off the modern version of French onion soup. It was particularly popular in the 19th century in the Parisian market hall “Les Halles” (now a huge shopping center) – both as a breakfast for the workers there and for all the night owls looking for a filling hangover meal after a party.

There are, of course, many different recipes for onion soup, but in general, you can summarize that a lot of onions are chopped and sautéed for a long time until they are almost golden. They then simmer in one or more liquids and are often gratinated with slices of bread and cheese as described. There are already plenty of recipes for vegan onion soups, which is why we’ve made another small modification and are combining the soup with porcini mushrooms today.

For this, we use dried porcini mushrooms, which are soaked beforehand. Opinions differ on the broth that is produced. You can read that the soaking water should definitely be disposed of, but also that it is great for cooking. We can’t take the decision away from you and therefore give you two options: either you use the stock directly for cooking or pour it off and use vegetable stock instead, in which the onions continue to simmer. The latter would also be the case if you use fresh mushrooms instead of dried ones. Either way, we say: Bon appétit!