French Onion-Bacon "Tarts"
With cheaters' quick-caramelized onions
It’s been raining here in Oakland the past few days, and chilly, damp weather has me wishing I could have a warm, comforting bowl of French onion soup. Since I can’t just pop over to French Roast or L’Express, like I used to when I lived and worked in New York, and I don’t have any beef stock in my freezer (just lots of chicken stock and dashi), I’ve opted for a snacking option that offers most of the same flavors with only a fraction of the work: a puff pastry tart topped with quick-caramelized onions, batons of bacon, and grated Gruyère. The whole thing can be made in less than an hour (or in just 30 minutes, if I make the onions ahead of time) and offers many of the same sweet-savory-salty flavors as the iconic soup.
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The key to making this dish (relatively) quickly is to use “cheaters’” caramelized onions. French onion soup gets much of its flavor from the sweet, rich caramelization and Maillard notes you get when you cook onions low and slow for 1–2 hours. While I love to make proper caramelized onions when I have the time, I rarely have the bandwidth to cook things that slowly these days. Instead, I use a trick I learned from chef Nafy Flatley, who contributed a gorgeous butternut flatbread pulaar recipe to my Snacking Dinners cookbook: I let the onions brown more quickly, then add a splash of water to help them soften. The result is quite flavorful (even if it doesn’t completely match the flavor depth of the original), and when the cooking is done, I often throw in a pinch of sugar, to stand in for some of the missing sweetness.
If you want to plan ahead for this dinner—and make the process of assembling it faster on the night of—you can make the onions ahead of time and refrigerate them. Sitting in the fridge overnight actually helps the onions soften further. Then all you have to do is cook the bacon while the oven is heating and the puff pastry is thawing. Most of the cooking happens once everything is in the oven—so you can have a glass of wine and relax.
French Onion-Bacon Flatbread
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 yellow onion, cut into thin slices
Kosher salt
Large pinch granulated sugar
1 sheet puff pastry
2 pieces bacon, cut into batons
1½–2 ounces grated Gruyère cheese (about 1 cup)
Melt the butter in a cast-iron pan (or similar) of high heat, then add the onion and a pinch of salt. Cook the onion on high, stirring constantly, until it is beginning to soften and some of the edges are beginning to brown.
When the onions start to brown, turn the heat down to medium, add a splash of water to the pan and mix it into the onions; this will help them soften more quickly and will keep them from burning. Continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the onions are nicely wilted and browned, about 20 minutes; if needed you can add another splash or two of water as you go, to keep things from burning.
Sprinkle a big pinch of sugar onto the onions and cook them, stirring, for another minute to let it caramelize. Transfer the onions to a container and clean the pan. (If making the onions ahead, you can refrigerate them for up to 5 days.)
Remove the puff pastry from the freezer and set it aside to come up in temperature. Add the bacon batons to the clean pan and cook them over high until cooked through but not yet crisp. Set the bacon aside (if you’ve refrigerated the onions, you can reheat them in the leftover bacon fat now).
Heat the oven to 350°F. When the puff pastry has thawed enough to unfold without breaking, open it onto a piece of parchment paper and roll it out to roughly 9”x12”. Spread the onions out on the pastry, leaving a border of about 1–2” around the edge, then sprinkle on the bacon and the cheese. Bake until the cheese is melted and the edges of the pastry are puffy and flaky and lightly browned, about 20 minutes.
Photos: Georgia Freedman
Ummmm ya I’d eat this whole thing. My husband doesn’t eat pork but we actually have some beef bacon in the fridge and it would probably actually be nice with this and play on the tradish French onion soup flavors. YUM.
I feel like whoever could sell really good pre-made caramelized onions would really have a hit…there are lots of onion jams on the market but I always wish you could easily buy something for soup (or tarts!)