French Onion Soup
Servings 5 pint jars
Ingredients
- 5 regular mouth pint jars sanitized, with lids and rings
- 4 lbs red and yellow onions about 5 medium onions
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 cups white wine
- 10 oz beef stock
- 10 oz chicken stock
- 10 oz apple cider
- 1 bouquet garni thyme sprigs, rosemary sprigs, and bay leaf tied together with kitchen string
- 1 shot whiskey
- salt and pepper to taste
Soup toppings
- stale, toasted country style bread
- grated Gruyère cheese
Instructions
Prepare the onions
- Trim the onions and halve lengthwise
- Slice onions into crescent shapes
- Heat the vegetable oil in a medium stock pot over medium-high heat
- Layer the onions in the pan with salt
- Cook until the onions are caramelized and dark brown, about 45-60 minutes, stirring occasionally
Prepare the soup base
- While the onions are cooking down, place a separate pan over high heat
- Add the beef stock, chicken stock, cider, whiskey and bouquet garni to the pan
- Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered
Bringing it all together
- Add the white wine to the onions and bring the heat to high
- Deglaze the pan and scrape up any browned bits and reduce the wine to a syrup consistency
- Remove the bouquet garni from the soup base and add base to the onions
- Add salt and pepper to taste
- Reduce heat and simmer
Canning the Onion Soup
- Add canning rack to the instant pot and fill with ~2 inches of water
- Set up the five pint jars near the cooking area with their lids and rings handy
- Distribute the soup evenly among the pint jars
- Wipe the rims of the jars clean as necessary
- Apply lids and screw the bands to finger tightness on the jars
- Using the jar lifter, lower the jars in to the instant pot
- Secure the lid of the instant pot and make sure the pressure valve is set
- Program the instant pot to cook under high pressure for 1 hour, and make sure to disable the Keep Warm setting
Wrapping up the process
- After the instant pot has finished cooking, be sure to let it come down to ambient pressure using the natural release cycle, do not try to do the quick release cycle as this can cause liquid to be forced out of the jars and potentially break the seals
- Once the instant pot is safe to open, open it and use the jar lifter to pull the jars out and place on a towel too dry and cool down
- If the rings on the jars are loose, they can be finger tightened again, carefully
- Leave the jars to cool, you should hear the lids popping as the pressure creates a seal on the jars
- After the jars have cooled, the rings can be removed and the jars are now shelf-stable and safe to store in a pantry to be eaten later
- If any jar failed to seal, it is safe to either eat immediately or reprocess in the instant pot, though you may need to replace the lid since it did not seal properly
Serving the Onion Soup
- Open the jar and reheat the soup
- Add soup to a soup crock and top with bread and grated cheese
- Place crock under broiler for 5 minutes or until cheese has fully melted and is bubbling
Notes
Regular mouth jars:
Normally regular or wide mouth mason jars are interchangeable, and the only consideration is how many jars will fit in the instant pot (5 regular mouth, 4 wide mouth). Since in this recipe the yield is 5 jars, I recommend using regular mouth pint jars.
