French Onion Chicken Soup

I've been craving some of my all time favorite soup lately, so I decided to come up with a way to make it with more protein so it's worth eating for a WLS patient.  This is what I came up with, it's easy and VERY tasty.

Ingredients

4 cups Beef Stock
2 Large Sweet Onions (thinly sliced)
1 Shallot (thinly sliced)
1/2 cup Tyson Grilled Diced Chicken (chopped)
4 slices Pepperidge Farm Very Thin Wheat Bread
4-8 slices Baby Swiss Cheese (or Gruyere)
1/4 tsp. Dried Thyme
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
3 tbsp. Land O' Lakes Light Butter
4 tbsp. Parmesan Cheese
Salt & Pepper to taste

Melt 2 tbsp. of butter in a saute pan.  Add your onions and shallot.  Reduce heat to medium, cover and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occassionally.  Meanwhile in a saucepan add the beef stock, dried thyme, salt and pepper to taste and bring to a simmer.  After 20 minutes raise the heat on the onions to medium high, remove the cover and cook onions for 10 more minutes until nice and golden and sweet. 

Add a ladle of stock to the saute pan to deglaze and pick up all the bits from the pan.  Set a 1/4 cup of this mixture aside to cool slightly for pureeing.  Add the rest of the onions and the chicken to the beef stock.  Meanwhile, puree the onion mixture we set aside with 1/2 tbsp of butter (this will thicken the soup slightly).  Stir the puree into the stock and simmer for 10 minutes.  While the soup is simmering toast your slices of bread and use the remaining 1/2 tbsp butter to spread onto the toast. 
Preheat your toaster oven broiler at the highest temperature.
Once soup has simmered for 10 minutes turn off the heat and carefully ladle into four 8 oz. ramekins, add 1 tbsp. of parmesan cheese to each ramekin and stir.  Top each ramekin with a slice of toast and 1 to 2 slices of baby swiss (depending on how cheesy you like it).

Place the ramekins on a baking pan and carefully put it in the toaster oven for 5 to 8 minutes or until cheese is nicely melted and gooey.

Makes 4 servings