Souper Night!

It was definitely warmer today (11 degrees F. when I woke up) and with a projected high of 20 degrees, I felt like spring had arrived. Well, maybe not…

I did take my morning walk outside, although I only managed to do three complete turns before my face started to freeze.

At lunch, I ventured out to Westborn to buy some supplies for tonight’s dinner. I dropped the stuff at home, treated the cats and wolfed down some leftover sausage and onions.

With the sun’s help, I got my routine five turns in the parking lot on the afternoon walk.

Back home after work, I talked to Jake for a bit, and then got onto making tonight’s supper: broccoli cheese soup.

Now, I cobbled this recipe out of three I found. All involve basically making a roux, adding milk (sometimes with half and half or heavy cream), and melting in sharp cheddar cheese and maybe one other kind of cheese, like shredded Swiss, for example.

In some, you start off with chicken stock, others suggest using it only if you have to thin the soup. And, in all but one, you cook the broccoli in the soup before adding the cheese.

So, here’s what I did: I used a tip from Mel’s Kitchen Café and, after cutting my broccoli into florets, I put them in a large Pyrex bowl, covered it with cling wrap and cooked them in the microwave for four minutes on high. This steams them perfectly in their own juice.

Meanwhile, in my Dutch oven, I melted a stick of butter and added a diced medium-sized onion. When the onion was soft, but still white, I added in 1/3 cup of AP flour. I stirred that to combine and cooked it for a minute or two.

Then I added in four cups of whole milk and two cups of half and half (both of which I warmed in the microwave, first). I added in a pinch of nutmeg (I grated mine from a whole nutmeg, but you could use dry), a small dash of salt (cheese is salty, remember) and lots of fresh ground black pepper.

If you were using raw broccoli, here’s where you would add it and let it simmer until it was tender (20-30 minutes), but I merely added my pre-cooked broccoli and moved on.

For my cheeses, I used about 2 1/2 cups of store-bought grated sharp cheddar cheese (I didn’t really “measure” it, it was what was left in the bag) and about one cup of pepper jack cheese I grated myself. I stirred it until the cheese melted and taste tested it. Hmmm… maybe a little more black pepper.

I didn’t think it was too thick (although this might change after it sets in the fridge) so I skipped the chicken stock and went right to eating a bowl with a chunk of that Rustic Italian bread. It was very good and the pepper jack cheese added the just the little kick I was hoping for.

I put the leftover soup in containers and into the fridge, cleaned up the kitchen (except for the Dutch oven which I left to soak) and went and watched some taped TV shows until bedtime.