Broccoli soup.....

My family likes broccoli... a lot. My girls have always said that they like the broccoli soup at school, well i think it is one of the better things there.

i have tried to make broccoli soup many times........ and i just cannot get it. Tonight i am resorting to a prepackaged cheese soup ! adding chopped fresh broccoli, an onion, and some velveeta .

This is not the way i usually cook,i dont like using pre-packaged and prefer cooking from scratch. but nothing seems to come out right. i have tried making it with cream, half and half, sour cream, evaporated milk, and freshly grated cheeses, and also other times with Kraft already shredded cheese. The end result always tastes ok..........but the girls give me a big shake of the head as to its appearance. I have never ordered broccoli soup anywhere......i have never even eaten it anywhere before.... so i have no point of reference on it.

any suggestions?

Becky, I've struggled with this soup at school and finally found the right way to do it.

Start with butter, then add onions and garlic (big chunks, you're going to blend it later - minced garlic burns easily) and saute until translucent. Make a "roux" (I know you know what that is!) on top of the butter and onions with flour. One cup of roux thickens around a gallon of liquid. One cup of roux = one stick of butter and 4 oz (by weight) flour. You may have to jinx this back and forth, but the roux should be like wet sand at the beach.

When the roux has a nutty aroma, add some liquid. Some COLD liquid - if you put hot chicken stock on top of the roux you will get flour-y lumps, so add the cold milk NOW, and whisk, whisk, whisk! Now you have something that's sort of the consistency of a milkshake. NOW add chicken broth, straight from the box at the supermarket. Chicken "stock" plus water and cream to make a gallon of liquid. Heat to a simmer.

Now for the cheese. Please don't add shredded cheddar - it's got too much oil in it. Add shredded Velveeta, or even a can of "cheese sauce" or a jar like Cheez Whiz. Whisk again.

Cook the broccoli separately, blanch it in boiling water/chicken stock and when it's just slightly tender, shock it in ice water. Take half the broccoli and put it in the soup, and blend it up with a stick blender (don't try to blend hot soup in a traditional blender, it will blow the top off the blender and get hot soup on the ceiling and all over you.) Bring the soup back up to temperature and then season it with salt, pepper and whatever else you like - red pepper flakes, a teaspoon of worcestershire, a little dark beer, whatever your family likes. Then - just before you serve it - turn the heat off and then gently stir the remaining bright, green blanched broccoli florets into the soup.

Let me know if you try it!

whoa.... thanks Marsha. I was going about it all wrong. I was boiling the crap out of my broccoli, the girls kept telling me it should be sort of smooth. So, i was trying to break the broccoli down. I was then adding my milk or cream and cheese to the pot with the drained broccoli and trying to make the soup from there. and then the cheese, i would add usually cheddar and something else. As soon as the shredded cheese hit the pot bam, it coagulated or something. Today's did come out a little better with a bit of velveeta.

I feel like an idiot....i was wayyyy off. But the cool part is i get to use my immersion blender! Yay!

I will try it out next week sometime and let you know how it went.

thanks again!

Make a cheesy white sauce with some chicken stock added and then add chopped up cooked broccoli.