Savory Onion Soup is hearty, delicious, and is a popular soup in Japan. In Japan, onion consommé is extremely popular and is sold in powdered form at most grocery stores.
Japanese Onion Soup is often confused with “Hibachi Soup”, a clear consommé served at Japanese Steakhouses in the US and other countries that use a clear dashi that contains onions and other vegetables such as carrots or shiitake mushrooms. But this hearty onions soup is more like a French Onion soup, flavored with beef broth, Worcestershire sauce and vinegar to give it a sweet, savory and somewhat tart flavor. This soup is more along the lines of a soup you might find in a fine dining restaurant in the heart of Tokyo.
This soup uses onions slice cut extremely thin – the thinner the better- so that the soup is loaded with onion threads. The increased surface area you gain by cutting more slices along with the texture of onion ropes makes this soup an “oishii” alternative to other appetizers or soups.
The soup takes about three hours to prepare, but the longer it simmers the better, so I recommend preparing it in the morning and letting it simmer all day long to really let the flavors combine.
In addition to onions, you can add about a tablespoon of dehydrated porcini mushrooms if you want to add additional umami flavor to the soup.
Savory Onion Soup is delicious when eaten on its own, but it can also be used as the basis for other recipes. Check out our recipe for Salisbury Steaks in Onion Sauce that use this onion soup as a base for the sauce.
Try this hearty and delicious soup out for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments section below.
Originally published in June 2021, reposted in July 2023