Well, onion soup mix is made of salt, salt, salt, dehydrated onion, salt, corn syrup, salt, yeast extract, often monosodium glutamate, and more salt. Why in heaven's name would you want to find a substitute?

OK, they're not that bad; in fact, nearly every package we looked at specified onion as the leading ingredient. In some, salt doesn’t show up until fourth place!

For years, we made a slightly embarrassing dish with canned cream of mushroom soup, and only found out how wonderful it was with homemade mushroom soup once when we were halfway through cooking (with kids screaming in the background), and found that we had no canned soup on hand, but that we did have mushrooms. We made it from scratch and it was wonderful. We're sure you'll find the same to be true with an onion soup of your own making.

You didn’t tell us what you're making, however. If you are making onion soup, clearly there are thousands of recipes available.

If you're making a dip, it can be as simple as stirring together 1 cup sour cream, 1 teaspoon of beef-flavored bouillon, 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onion, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, and mixing thoroughly.

Frankly, an onion soup itself needn't be much harder. You can peel and chop 6 onions (about a pound), cook them slowly in 3 tablespoons butter, until tender and slightly browned, stirring constantly. Add a quart of beef (or vegetable) stock and boil for 2 or 3 minutes.

There are more complicated dips and more complicated soups, but that should get you started.