There was a time when I thought this couldn’t be done, or at least it couldn’t be done well and without the use of store-bought vegan cheese, which I try to reserve for those occasions when I’m totally desperate. . Well, I’ve learned a bit about vegan cheese over the years spent creating this blog and I was able to come up with a homemade solution that actually works! I actually tried out a bunch of variations on this recipe and I think what I came up with is the best vegan French onion soup ever. See, initially I thought I’d do something totally different with the cheese. When I made this lasagna I was pretty impressed at how well the bechamel sauce browned on top but stayed gooey and creamy underneath, and I thought I could make a version of that that worked pretty convincingly as a vegan cheese. But when I got down to it I had doubts, so I did a side by side smackdown comparison of the bechamel versus vegan cheese with tapioca starch. The tapioca won, big time. And by tweaking the recipe a bit I was able to come up with a cheese that browned nicely but had just the right level of gooeyness. See how good it looks? It tastes just as good! I’ve also perfected my basic onion soup recipe: even though the whole cheese thing held me back for a while, I have been making basic cheese-free onion soup here and there, and the recipe has improved and evolved over time. My old recipe used white wine (which is great in a pinch), but red gives it that robustness you thought you could only get in onion soup made with beef broth. Soy sauce intensifies the flavor. Oh and as for the onions, I recommend caramelizing the heck out of them. I sometimes cheat and crank the burner up to medium (which cuts the cook-time down by half or more), but keeping it in the low to medium low range will give you some intensely savory caramely flavor. It’s so worth it.
