Gordon Ramsay French Onion Soup Recipe

Gordon Ramsay’s French onion soup is a slow-cooked onion soup made with 2 lbs (1kg) of onions, dry cider, chicken stock and double cream (heavy cream), topped with Lincolnshire Poacher cheese croutons on sourdough. It takes about an hour and serves 4.

This recipe appears as “Cider and Onion Soup with Lincolnshire Poacher Croutons” in Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street Kitchen, where he describes it as “rich and aromatic” and “really heartening on cold wet days.” He also has a “White Onion and Cheddar Soup” in Great British Pub Food, plus his restaurant Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill in Las Vegas serves an Onion & Ale Soup.

What makes his version different from every other French onion soup: he uses dry cider instead of wine. Cider adds a gentle apple acidity that lifts the sweetness of the onions without the tannins that red wine brings, so the soup tastes cleaner and lighter while still being rich enough for a cold evening.

FAQs

Why does Ramsay use cider instead of wine?

Classic French onion soup uses red or white wine to deglaze the caramelised onions. Ramsay swaps it for dry cider, which changes the whole direction of the soup.

Cider brings a lighter, fruitier acidity than wine. Red wine adds tannins that can make the broth taste heavy, while cider lifts the natural sweetness of the onions without competing with it. This makes sense for his version because he’s cooking the onions soft rather than deeply caramelised, so a gentler liquid matches that approach.

Why does he blitz the soup smooth instead of leaving the onions whole?

This is the biggest departure from classic French onion soup, where you can see and feel the long strands of onion in the broth. Ramsay blends his version into a smooth, creamy texture.

The result is closer to a velouté than a rustic broth. The onion flavour is still the backbone, but the texture is silky and uniform. It also means the cream integrates fully rather than floating on top, and the soup coats the back of a spoon the way a restaurant soup should.

Why Lincolnshire Poacher cheese instead of Gruyère?

Lincolnshire Poacher is a hard English cheese with a sharp, nutty flavour similar to Gruyère but with more bite. Ramsay uses it at Bread Street Kitchen because the whole recipe leans British rather than French.

He notes you can replace it with “any mature Cheddar if you prefer.” The key is using a cheese that melts well and has enough sharpness to cut through the sweet, creamy soup underneath. A mild cheese would disappear.

How is this different from his Pub Food onion soup?

The “White Onion and Cheddar Soup” in Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food takes a completely different approach. It uses new season’s white onions cooked for just 7 to 10 minutes until soft, then simmers in chicken stock and finishes with milk, cream and Montgomery cheddar stirred directly into the soup rather than melted on croutons.

The Bread Street version cooks the onions four times longer, reduces them with cider, and keeps the cheese on the crouton. The Pub Food version is a quick cream soup. The Bread Street version is closer to French onion in spirit, just filtered through a British lens.

Why does he cook the onions without colour?

Most French onion soup recipes caramelise the onions until deep golden brown. Ramsay goes the opposite direction: 35 to 40 minutes of slow cooking until “meltingly soft, but without colour.”

Caramelising creates a toasty, bitter-sweet depth that defines classic French onion soup. Cooking without colour keeps the onion flavour pure and sweet, which works better here because the cider and cream are doing the heavy lifting on complexity. Two different philosophies, both valid.

Can I use beef stock instead of chicken?

Ramsay specifies chicken stock, which keeps the soup lighter and lets the onion and cider flavours come through. In his Ultimate Cookery Course, he explains that brown beef stock is “much richer and more intense” and is specifically “great for sauces, stews and hearty soups such as French onion.”

So he knows beef stock is the classic choice for French onion soup but deliberately picks chicken stock for this version. If you want something closer to a traditional Parisian French onion soup, swap in beef stock, skip the cream and the blending, and use Gruyère instead of Cheddar on the croutons. But at that point you’re making a different soup.