It's simple, but time consuming.

I set up to render the onions down for 6 hours using nothing but lump. After all this time it only had a little hint of smoke. I compared it to doing it inside on the stove and everyone said it was better over lump. Just enough to set it apart.

DO NOT scrape the brown stuff off into the onions! I used hickory smoked salt in the recipe so that helped kick it up.

I have plenty of smoked cheese around but I wanted to taste the sweetness of the onions. I actually had to cut it with a shot of vinegar to reduce the sweetness just a little. No broth at all.

• 7 lbs of yellow onions, chopped
• 6 cups of water
• splash of sherry
• splash of red wine
• splash of vinegar
• crispy bread
• Gruyère cheese

Chop up 7lbs of yellow onions

Setup using the plate setter legs down then use some spacers to hold a pizza stone for an air gap.

Stabilize at 300

Use a large ceramic coated cast iron pot and gently cook the onions with only 1 tblsp of butter and 2 tblsp of salt.

Stir it every now and then, it will take hours to gently cook down and you don't want to rush it. This batch took 5 hours or so for the liquid to cook off. Toward the end you will need to stir more often so you don't burn the onions.

Remove the onions from the pot at this point, clean the pot and then return onions to pot.

Add 6 cups of water, a splash of sherry, a splash of red wine, and a splash of vinegar.

Raise the temp to 350 so it will simmer for an hour.

Ladle the soup into ramekins and top with crispy bread and Gruyère cheese.

Raise the temp to 450 and place them in until the cheese browns

ed: THANKS to Ronbeaux1 for offering to share this really great looking French Onion Soup with us!