There are a handful of soups out there that I want to make one of these days. Seafood asparagus bisque, chicken enchilada, and broccoli cheese, among others. After crossing clam chowder off the list with an awesome recipe a few weeks ago, I decided to riff on that recipe and modify it for broccoli cheese soup.
Here’s what you’ll need:
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 C flour
1/2 lb bacon
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
2-3 carrots, peeled and diced
2-3 celery stalks, diced
1-2 broccoli crowns, cut small
2 C heavy whipping cream
2 1/2 C milk
4 C cheese
Start by making a roux in your soup pot. Just melt the butter, stir in the flour, and scoop out the paste that forms as a result. This will be used to thicken the soup after we’ve added all the ingredients.
Fry your bacon in the pot, pulling the bacon out when it’s relatively crispy. Put on some paper towel to finish draining.
Over medium-high heat, add the potatoes to the pot (with the bacon grease still in there). Cook for 2-3 minutes, and then add the remaining vegetables.
After you’ve let the vegetables cook for a few minutes (5 or so), add the milk and the cream. Reduce the heat to medium and start stirring.
As the soup warms up, add the cheese. I added mine too early, right after the milk and cream, and the cheese mostly sank to the bottom and melted there. It turned out alright in the end, but it’s certainly something that can wait a few minutes.
When your soup is good and hot (15 to 20 minutes later) add the roux in bits and pieces and keep stirring. Your soup will go from thin and watery to thick and hearty quickly.
Sprinkle your broken up bacon on top and stir it in. Take a moment to marvel at the beauty that is bacon.
Serve immediately. Refrigerate any leftovers. Makes approximately 7 bowls.
One of the things I noticed about this soup is that the vegetables tend to stay a bit on the firm side. You can always allow the soup to simmer a little longer if you don’t want anything crunchy, but additional simmer time means more stirring.
Despite my better efforts to cut the broccoli relatively small, I still found it was almost a bit too big to be acceptable for soup purposes. It’s one of the few times I’ve wished I had a chopper or broccoli florets. Fresh florets might work better than broccoli crowns, actually.
I was also a little disappointed that 4 cups of cheese didn’t make the soup, well, cheesier. I suspect this has less to do with a lack of cheese and more to do with the fact that I didn’t throw Macaroni and Cheese Yellow #6 in there. The soup does indeed have a cheesy flavor, but you could always add more cheese I suppose. I went exclusively with sharp cheddar, but you could play around with the mix and blend something else in.
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