This recipe is a healthy twist on the classic French onion soup with an ingredient that might surprise you!  

It was so fun developing this recipe. Its really hard to compete with the cheesy part of French onion soup, but I would say we nailed it, this soup is so creamy satisfying, you won't miss the cheese.  

Why eliminate the cheese you might be thinking?  We use to eat cheese so much...like everyday I think.  We would buy those really big blocks of cheese every time we did our grocery shopping.  Eating cheese all of the time was not doing us any good.  A healthy switch that works for us is we like to use raw cashews in some recipes as our substitute for cheese.  Sure its not exactly the same, but for us the key to weight loss and keeping our energy high is all about finding healthy switches for the things we love.  

To take the flavour of this soup to the next level we used a really good quality aged balsamic vinegar.  For this recipe we took a trip to our favourite local olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting room Olive-Me & Co.  and picked up a bottle of "white cranberry pear balsamic vinegar", so delicious!

Top it with these healthy homemade crunchy croutons...yum!

We like to make this French onion soup on special occasions or for a quite date night at home during the colder months.  

What You Need

• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 3 large white onions (or 4-5 medium sized) 
• 1 large red onion
• 1 teaspoon Himalayan salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dry thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tablespoon of good quality aged balsamic vinegar
• 3 cups coconut water         
• 1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard
• To taste himalayan salt & pepper
• 1/2 cup raw unsalted cashews 
• Croutons for garnishing (optional)    

What To Do

Get Cooking  

(1) Cut up the onions into thin slices, either by hand or with a food processor.

(2) Melt the coconut oil in  a large pot over medium-high heat.  

(3) Add the onions, Himalayan salt,  pepper, thyme.  Cook until caramelized, about 40-45 minutes, stirring every10 minutes or so.

The broth 

(4) Add balsamic vinegar and stir, cook for another 10 minutes

(5) Add the coconut water, dijon mustard and bay leaf and stir.  Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to low and simmer for 20 minutes.

(6) Remove the bay leaf.

Blend  

(7) Scoop 1 1/2 cups of the onion soup and put it in a high speed blender, add in the cashews, blend until really smooth.

(8) Pour the blended soup into the pot and stir and voila the onion soup is beautifully creamy now! 

Almost there 

(9) Taste it, if you think it needs some more himalayan salt and pepper, add some in now.

(10) Garnish with croutons (optional, if you are going to add them homemade croutons are always better!) 

Let’s Get Healthy Together

Get in the kitchen and give this recipe a try.

Enjoy

Let us know how it turns out for you.  Write us a comment or post a picture on instagram and tag us @saltsole, we wanna see it.

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• Healthy Homemade Crunchy Croutons 

Credit/Acknowledgement

Icon credit - Noun Project

• Onion icon created by: Luis Prado
• Bowl and spoon icon created by: Creative Stall
• Blender icon created by: Yorlmar Campos
• Running man icon by: Norbert Kucsera