Broccoli Soup from Scratch

If you have never tried making broccoli soup from scratch, you really should.  It is easy and tastes sooo much better than from a can.

This is how I made it.  I'm not an expert by any means.

First you need to decide whether you want any onions in your soup.  If you do, just cook up a diced onion with some butter or oil until translucent.  But if you don't like onion in your broccoli, just leave it out.  Take a bunch of broccoli (the package I got had two bunches so I made broccoli salad too ;), wash it and cut up the heads.  I even peel and cut up the stem.  DH loves broccoli stems!  Now you need to cook the broccoli.  Put it in a fairly big pot and just cover with either water or chicken broth.  I use my homemade broth whenever I do a soup because it adds so much flavor to the soup or stew.  Cook the broccoli until it is easily pierced with the tip of a knife.  Take the broccoli and put it in a blender with a little bit of the broth and pulse until you get it pretty well chopped up.  Put the blender broccoli back into your pot.  You now have soup!  But if you want cream of broccoli do the following:

In a small pot make a roux.  Now if you have never made a roux it's pretty easy.  All it is is butter and flour that you cook to get the flour taste out and it browns a little bit but don't go away from the stove otherwise you'll burn it really quickly.  If you do burn it, chuck it out.  It will make your soup taste really bad.  Add a little bit of milk to it stirring it all the time to get rid of any lumps. Lumps are bad especially on your hips but I digress LOL.  Keep adding milk until you have added about a cup to cup and a half total to the roux.  Let it bubble away for a couple of minutes, stirring it.  Now add it to the broccoli pot and stir.

Now one of the hardest things you need to do...taste it.  Add some salt and pepper.  I added celery salt and it really tasted good.  I also added white pepper which is a little hotter than black at least I think so but this is YOUR soup.  You're going to eat it so add whatever spices you want.  Bowl it up and enjoy.  Nice to have soup on a cold day.

UPDATE:  I almost forgot...old age is creeping up on me...You can add cheese to this soup as well.  I added about 1 cup of white cheddar cheese to it.  It was yummy.



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