Broccoli Cheese Soup

One of my favorite things about eating during the winter is soup.  You can never have enough soup recipes and it really is simple to be creative making soup to be whatever you want!  Starting with a few basic ingredients {water, vegetables, meat}, and throwing in your own ideas, a simple meal is made that is warm and delicious.  I just came up with this formula:

SOUP = ART IN A POT

What do you think?  Corny?  Oh well, I thought it was pretty creative :)

Anyway, onto my soup recipe...

This is one of our favorites {at least my husband and my}.  It's also great with cauliflower instead of broccoli. You could add more cheese, puree it in a blender, like Pioneer Woman does, or just make it the way I suggest here.  Either way it's yummy.  We ate it with some cornbread and sliced strawberries on the side.  Delicious.

Broccoli Cheese Soup

Printable Version

Take a head of broccoli or 3 cups broccoli florets, either fresh or frozen is fine {if frozen cook according to package directions} and cook it until almost done.  I prefer fresh, and am loving what I can get at COSTCO:

My favorite method for cooking broccoli is steaming it, for two reasons: the taste is better and it doesn't make the house smell as bad.  Just put a little water in the bottom of your steamer pot, bring it to a boil, then place the broccoli in the basket over the water, cover, and cook for about 6 minutes.

You want it to still hold its bright green color and it will cook slightly once added to the soup, so don't overcook.   Allow to cool for a few minutes and then chop into small pieces.

Using the same pot, melt some butter, then add some onion and cook until tender.

Next, dump in some flour and stir it until it's well combined.

I made my own chicken broth using this boullion, but you could certainly use canned, boxed, or the real homemade kind.

One teaspoon of granules + one cup of boiling water = 1 cup chicken broth.  This is what the granules look like.   I started boiling my water for the broth before cooking the broccoli and it was ready by the time I needed it for this part of the recipe.

Slowly add the broth to the pot and stir it well.

Heat this mixture, stirring occasionally, until it thickens up pretty well.

Dump in the milk and heat it until the mixture is just barely boiling.

Add the broccoli; I did it by hand a bit at a time so as not to cause soup to plop all over my stove top.

Then, add some cheese.  I prefer to have freshly grated cheese {did you know that pre-shredded cheese sometimes contains extra ingredients that are not cheese? When my husband read an article about this to me, I switched to buying chunks of cheese and just shredding it myself.  Plus, it tastes better this way}, but when I'm pregnant I get carpel tunnel in my wrists, and grating cheese is one of the most difficult things for me to do!  So, I used 1/2 pre-grated and 1/2 freshly grated for this recipe.

If you look carefully, you can even see the difference.  The freshly grated is on the right hand side--looks better!

Add the cheese and stir until melted.

Add salt and pepper to taste.  And, of course, taste it.

It's wonderful.  And, still tastes fantastic heated up the next day.  {It also freezes well.  My mom made a batch for us last winter and froze it and it was great.  Maybe just freeze for 2 months, though}.

source: my mom