Cream of Broccoli soup

Happy Monday! I’ve had a craving for Broccoli cheese soup lately so I thought I’d take a swing at making a batch at home. I pretty much noodled between two recipes after a few fruitless google searches: Better Homes and Gardens and How to cook everything (app). I really wanted to use my instant pot, but nothing popped up in those searches. As I began to cook the broccoli, I texted my sister that I thought it was easier to pick up a bowl at McCalister’s. I know – bad attitude going into the process. Overall pretty good. In my opinion it makes more sense as a ‘ooh I have all these cooked vegetables left over, what should I do with them?’ recipe.

Ingredients

• 4 cups fresh of frozen broccoli florets (I actually used a 10.8 oz bag of frozen broccoli and added a fresh crown)
• 1 1/2 cup chicken broth (divided)
• 1 T butter
• 1 T flour
• 1 C half-and-half (you can use milk for less decadence)
• 1/2 – 1 C shredded cheese
• Seasoning (I used salt, pepper and some rotisserie chicken seasoning from Lidl)

Steps

1. Cook broccoli, covered, in a pot of water and chicken broth. I had a 32 oz box of chicken broth, so I set aside what I needed for the recipe and then dumped the rest on top of the broccoli, then topped off with water. This should take about 10 minutes. Drain. Reserve 1 cup of broccoli.
2. In a food processor combine remaining broccoli and 3/4 cup chicken broth. Process until smooth (about 1 minute or so).
3. In the same pot that you cooked the broccoli melt butter. Stir in flour and seasoning. You are creating a white/light colored roux (vs. the dark roux you’d make for gumbo). Add half-and-half. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly.
4. Stir in the cup of whole broccoli you held in reserve along with the remaining 3/4 cup of broth….and CHEESE. I, of course, was much more heavy handed with the cheese. I dare say I exceeded the 1 cup! Now the first recipe I looked at said American cheese…which probably would be delicious. However…I couldn’t find any in the refrigerated section at Kroger and didn’t want to purchase a block of velveeta that would gather dust….so I opted for sharp cheddar cheese. Anyway…cook and stir until heated through.

I’m eating this for lunch today…because I presumed just like spaghetti sauce, this concoction would improve with an overnight rest.

I have a ton of half-and-half left, so my coffee was super rich this morning. I imagine I might make another soup so I don’t have to throw it out (or maybe some oatmeal).