Vegetarian French Onion Soup
Vegetarian French Onion Soup
This vegetarian french onion soup is absolutely perfect! Deep flavors, butter, hours of caramelized onions, melted cheese and bread – my DREAM meal and hands down my favorite soup.
A little different than my traditional french onion soup with beef broth; this is made with a deep, homemade vegetable broth that is absolutely perfect. It’s also using white wine instead of red wine, as well as sharp cheddar instead of gruyere & swiss (although you can totally use that here as well).
Basically, you MUST make this.
Some notes:
First, If you don’t have time and don’t have the ingredients to make your homemade vegetable broth, that’s totally okay. Store bought is definitely fine here as well. (although I do urge you to try your own!)
Second, Here I’m using white wine and sharp white cheddar, but you can totally use red wine or gruyere or swiss – like my other french onion soup. Just depends what you can get, and what you prefer. Both are just as delicious! This is how I made this one.
Third, I prefer to toast my sourdough baguette and then add on the soup for finishing in the onion. This allows the bread to not get super soggy, just soft and crunchy at the same time. But if you’re in a pinch, just add your slices without toasting on the soup prior to the oven.
Fourth, we add flour to the onions because it helps thicken up the soup, making it super creamy, giving it body rather than being watery.
Resources for this soup:
- Traditional beef broth french onion soup can be found here.
- The recipe video can be found on my tiktok here.
Looking for more soup recipes? Start below:

Vegetarian French Onion Soup
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- 5 yellow onions or mix of sweet and yellow, thinly sliced
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 sprigs thyme
- ½ cup white wine
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 3-4 cups vegetable broth
- salt and pepper to taste
- sourdough baguette & sharp cheddar to top each soup you can also use greyere and swiss
Instructions
- Prep your soup ingredients by thinly slicing all your onions and mincing your garlic.
- Toss your onions with flour.
- In a dutch oven or deep soup pot, melt butter and olive oil and sweat your onions and garlic for about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Next, add your thyme, 1 bay leaf, balsamic vinegar and white wine and let reduce and caramelize for about 1 hour.
- Once your onion mixture is cooked down, dark brown and caramelized, add your vegetable broth in. Warm up and combine all the ingredients together.
- Next, scoop your soup into oven safe bowls, add a slice of bread (you can either pre-toast your bread and then add to let broil with the cheese, or place un-toasted in the broiler with the cheese) then a handful of shredded cheese – broil or bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes until bubbly and melted. Remove and enjoy! Top with fresh thyme and fresh cracked pepper.
Wow – this soup was so delicious! I followed it exactly, except I used red wine instead of white wine. I used a slice of swiss on top, with the bread toasted. I’ve been searching for a good vegetarian recipe that would give me the same dark color and rich flavor as the traditional french onion soup, and this hit the spot! Will definitely be adding this to my soup circulation this season. Thank you!
This sounds amazing! Thank you for trying it out Sara! Love this soup so much.
Hi there!
I was just wondering approximately how many servings this soup would make?? Dying to try it 🙂
About 2-3 full servings and around 4 appetizer soups!
Hi when you let it reduce for an hour is this supposed to be covered or without the lid? 🙂 thanks!!
Covered, but it’s okay if uncovered as well!