I was intimidated by the prospect of making a broccoli cheese soup, but I like it so much, I had to try. The recipe we came up with turned out to be one of the fastest, easiest soup recipes I’ve ever tried. Just to clarify, a bunch of broccoli is what you buy rubber-banded together in the store: a stalk is one of the pieces within the rubber band, and florets are the flowery tops.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 4
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Cut the broccoli florets from the stems and discard the stems. Cut the florets into bite-size pieces and cook in the boiling water for 5 minutes, or until slightly crunchy. Drain and set aside.
Step 2
Melt the butter in the same saucepan over medium heat and stir in the flour. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until bubbly. Add 1 cup of the milk and stir until smooth. Add the remaining 3 cups of milk and cook, stirring occasionally, for 7 to 10 minutes, or until it just begins to boil.
Step 3
Reduce the heat to low and add the American cheese, stirring until it is completely melted. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Reserve 4 of the broccoli florets for garnish and stir the remaining broccoli into the soup.
Step 4
Ladle the soup into 4 bowls. Sprinkle some of the Cheddar in the center of each bowl and top with a piece of broccoli.
Kitchen Vocab
Step 5
Cooking briefly in boiling water is called blanching. It is used either to cook vegetables or just to brighten and set their color. The amount of time for blanching depends on what you want the end result to be, but in the case of green vegetables, they should never be blanched for more than 7 minutes or the color will become pale and the vegetables soggy. If you are blanching vegetables to brighten the color or to just cook them slightly, you will need to shock them. This is done by immediately placing them in a bowl of ice water to completely stop the cooking process and avoid residual cooking from the heat already in the vegetables.
