The Secret Pantry Ingredient You Need For Better French Onion Soup

French onion soup is a delicious but intimidating recipe. The onions at the heart of the dish take up to an hour to truly caramelize. Then, the other important base ingredient — beef stock — takes hours and hours to simmer, and that's after roasting the bones with vegetables and aromatics. Fortunately, you can cut the time down with one ingredient from your pantry: powdered gelatin. 

Gelatin replaces an important part of the soup's process. When making homemade stock, gelatin comes from the natural collagen that leaches out of beef bones as they simmer and break down. When combined with caramelized onions, it is what gives a rich, smooth, and slightly viscous texture that French onion soup is known for. However, store-bought beef broth is made with just the meat, so you lose out on the texture that gelatin lends. With store-bought stock, manufacturers also often remove the gelatin to ensure that it remains liquid. 

Adding powdered gelatin basically adds an important ingredient back to the store-bought product, improving the consistency and overall richness. And don't be tempted to use flour or cornstarch as a thickener instead of gelatin! It will make the soup too heavy, and the savory broth will taste more akin to something like gravy.

Powdered gelatin is easier to work with than gelatin sheets, as it distributes seamlessly into the broth or stock. However, you do need to hydrate it first in a process called blooming. This step is vital to ensuring that it dissolves easily in the soup broth.

Bloom the gelatin by sprinkling it evenly over the surface of a bowl of cool water. Stir the powder in, and then let it stand for about 10 minutes — it will have a gloopy texture. Then, add the gelatinous substance to the store-bought stock and bring both ingredients to a simmer. You can also bloom the gelatin in a pot of cold stock, turning on the pot after the blooming process. Just stir well to combine!

Now all that is left to do is incorporate the onions (you can even use this trick to caramelize onions faster) and top the bowls off with bread and your go-to cheese for French onion soup. Just remember: Don't leave the store without gelatin if you plan to use packaged broth or stock. Think of them as an invaluable shortcut to a good French onion soup.