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I love french onion soup, but it takes awhile to make.  A few years ago I ran across an article in Cooks Illustrated which recommends doing the initial caramelization in the oven.  It still takes about 4 hours to make, but 3.5 of those hours are basically unattended, so if you are home for a few hours doing chores you can easily make a batch.  It freezes well too.  I have a few problems with the Cooks Illustrated recipe.  It recommends using cooking spray, which I don’t use because I think it is bad for my pots and my family.  It also recommends using a mix of beef and chicken broth, because they are using canned broth and canned beef broth tends to be lacking in flavor.  But if you make your own broth, full on beef broth is the way to go. Also, if you have a food processor with a cutting blade that really cuts down on the prep time, I use the 4mm cutting blade and it works great.  

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 pounds of yellow onions peeled and cut into slices (by the 4mm blade of your food processor)  

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 cup dry red wine (white wine will do in a pinch)

6 cups beef broth

6 sprigs of fresh thyme

2 bay leafs

Several 1/2 inches slices of a baguette

Shredded gruyere cheese

Preheat oven to 400F.

Rub the inside of a heavy-bottomed large Dutch oven with the butter. Add onions and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Cook, covered, 1 hour (onions will be moist and slightly reduced in volume).

Remove pot from oven and stir onions, scraping bottom and sides of pot. Return pot to oven with lid slightly ajar and continue to cook until onions are very soft and golden brown, 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours longer, stirring onions and scraping bottom and sides of pot after 1 hour.

Remove pot from oven and place over medium-high heat.  Cook onions, stirring frequently and scraping bottom and sides of pot, until liquid evaporates and onions brown, 5 to 10 minutes, reducing heat to medium if onions are browning too quickly.

When the bottom of the pot is coated with dark brown crust, stir in 1/4 cup water to deglaze, scraping pot bottom to loosen crust, and cook until water evaporates and pot bottom has formed another dark crust, 6 to 8 minutes.  Repeat process of deglazing 2 more times, onions should be a very dark brown.

Stir in wine and keep stirring until wine evaporates. Add beef broth and 2 cups of water, scraping up any brown bits on the bottom of the pot.  Add the thyme and bay leaf.  Bring pot to a boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes.

Remove and discard herbs, then season with salt and pepper to taste.  At this point you can allow to cool and refrigerate or freeze for another day.  If you do that warm the soup over low heat before proceeding.

While soup simmers, toast baguette slices in single layer on baking sheet in 400F oven oven until bread is dry and golden at edges, about 10 minutes. After bread is done toasting place a rack 6 inches from broiler and heat broiler. Place soup is heat-safe soup bowls or crocks on rimmed baking sheet and fill each with about 1 1/2 cups soup.  Top each bowl with one or two toasted baguette slices (you do not want them to overlap) and sprinkle with cheese.  Broil until well browned and bubbly, 7 to 10 minutes, but keep a close eye on it, food under a broiler goes from not done to burnt very quickly.