Broccoli Cheese Soup

So far in 2014 I've been a pretty lazy blogger. I like to tell people that that's because I've had a lot of things going on in other areas. Yes, that's what I like to tell people. 

But maybe now it's time to get out of my lazy pants and actually blog about some of the many food pictures I've got sitting there on my computer (much to my husband's annoyance). I think that my 2014 blog goal will be to get all my favorite recipes on this blog. There are actually still some that I haven't blogged and that is just wrong. Here's the first. 

Kip and I loooove broccoli cheese soup. It is our Christmas Eve tradition to put the kids to bed and then eat this together (ah; blessed tradition). But we like it plenty of other times too. 

Because we like it so much (Kip isn't normally much of a soup man, but he goes for this), I've tried several different recipes. This is our favorite. This recipe is from Pioneer Woman. It's tough to go wrong with her--it's a delicious recipe and I love how creamy it is, but I found that I did have some trouble with this milk-based soup getting stuck to the pot bottom. To avoid this I felt like I had to stand there and stir the soup constantly and I didn't love that. This year I realized that I could nuke the broccoli before adding it to the soup, which keeps the soup from sticking (because it's not simmering as long) and actually gets dinner on your table a little faster too. 

Broccoli Cheese Soup

adapted from Pioneer Woman

serves 6-8

prep time: 5-10 minutes

Cook time: 15 minutes

Cost: $3.20

onion: .15, butter: .25, flour: .05, milk: .50, half and half: 1.25, 1.00

1 whole onion, diced (or shredded if you've got onion averse people in your house)

1 stick (1/2 C) butter

1/3 C flour

4 C milk (PW recommends whole milk; I use it if we've got it, but it works with 2% also)

2 C half and half

4 heads broccoli, cut into florets

1 pinch nutmeg

3 C grated cheese (I use milk cheddar, but mixing that with Gouda would be wicked good too)

salt and pepper to taste

chicken broth for thinning

Note on cheese: I grate mine. If you buy it pre-grated, they put something on it to keep it from sticking together. This may make it less easy to stir in and melt. I don't know because I haven't used it, but be warned that it might make the cheese harder to incorporate if you use pre-grated. 

Melt butter, add onions. Cook for 3-4 minutes, then sprinkle flour over top. Stir to combine and cook 1 minute. Whisk in milk and then half and half. Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper. 

Make the broccoli. {Note: You can do this while your onion is cooking if you've got a lot of kitchen coordination going on. Or you can make it before you start the onion/roux/white sauce. Or you can take the white sauce off the heat when you've made it and make the broccoli.} Here's how you nuke your broccoli. Put your broccoli florets into a microwave safe bowl, add some water (let's say 1/2-1 C--you don't need a whole lot) and cover it with plastic wrap or a microwave safe lid. Microwave for 3 minutes. Stir (watch out--steam will pour out of it when you remove the plastic wrap; don't get burned). Put the plastic wrap/lip back on, then microwave for 1-2 more minutes if needed to soften your broccoli. When it's done pour off the water. 

Now add the cooked broccoli to the white sauce you've created from the milk/half and half. Cook, stirring, for several minutes. Stir in cheese and allow to melt. 

Taste for seasonings. Add a bit of chicken broth if you feel it needs it (we never do). Pioneer Woman purees hers, but I like the chunks, although I do mash up/chop up the broccoli so that they're smaller chunks. 

We serve it in soup bowls for special occasions, but any old bowl will do. 

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Brocomole

This month for Secret Recipe Club, I had Learning Patience. It didn't take me long to pick a recipe called Brocomole. Why? Because broccoli has been on sale lately. And Kip loves it. In fact, in a cruel twist of marital fate, it was the one veggie he really loved when we got married and the one (though I love almost all vegetables) that I really didn't care for. In an even more cruel familial twist, it is one of the few vegetables that my entire family will consume whether they love it or not (Mark eats his paltry and mandatory piece doused in BBQ sauce, but he eats it). Consequently, I've learned to appreciate it more. I've even come to love it roasted (oh, mama), though we eat it steamed more often because (mysterious to me) that is how the masses tend to prefer it around here. As a kid steamed broccoli was one of those foods I would not eat. And yet my son who eats, like 7 foods total is willing to choke it down if he wants dessert (and, yes, there are many many foods he is not willing to choke down, dessert or not). So every time I discover broccoli in a new, fun way, I go for it. Brocomole is just that. It is a broccoli dip. With cream cheese and sour cream. And it's delicious.

Beyond deliciousness, however, it is versatile. You can eat it with crackers for lunch (this is the route I went), but it would also be a fun party dip or appetizer or side/veggie dish at dinner (how I plan to introduce my family to it--nothing like a pile of crackers on the side to get then to try their veggies). I bet  you could even use it as a mayonnaise substitute on a sandwich to very good effect. Also, it can be made as I did with garlic, salt, and pepper, and a little onion and cayenne. But I bet it'd kick butt with dill and parsley. Or even a Tbsp of ranch powder. Or some pesto. Or whatever. So, yes, versatile.

Furthermore, I'd be willing to bet that if you didn't have broccoli you could make it with cauliflower (that way it would even be white and no one would have to confront greenness) or kale.

Brocomole
adapted from Learning Patience
Makes about 1 1/2 C
Prep time: 6-7 minutes
Cost: $1.20 with sale broccoli and cream cheese (probably closer to 1.50 or 1.75 if items not on sale)
broccoli: .50, cream cheese: .50, sour cream: .15, garlic: .05,

Note on cayenne and other seasonings: The seasonings in this will strengthen the longer it sits. So if you plan to serve it soon, feel free to go all nuts. However, if you plan to serve it the day after you make it, be careful, especially with potent things like cayenne. I made this a day ago and the cayenne was perfect; today when I had my leftovers it was (still good, but) more wowza. So, be warned.

1 head broccoli, cut
juice and zest from 1/2 lemon (if you don't have a lemon, you can use 1/2-1 Tbsp lemon juice here instead)
4 oz cream cheese
2 oz (2 Tbsp) sour cream
1-2 cloves garlic
dash onion powder
3 chives
tiny dash cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the broccoli. I did this in the microwave. Put broccoli in microwave-safe bowl with a bit of water. Then cover with plastic and cook for 3-4 minutes or until tender. (Be careful when removing plastic--the steam will whoosh out and could burn you.) Note: This could also be the perfect recipe for leftover broccoli. If you've got a cup or two leftover, go for it.

Put broccoli and rest of ingredients in food processor (blender would probably work too if it's a decent one, though this stuff is fairly thick) and process away.

Let cool and eat with crackers or other vegetables for dipping.

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Broccoli Salad (Gluten-free, Dairy-free)

It's another Secret Recipe Club post.

This month I got Angela's Kitchen, which features gluten-free and dairy-free cooking. I myself could probably gnaw on gluten all day, but I have a friend with Celiac's, which means I do have an appreciation of the challenge of finding gluten-free foods and the joy in finding ones that taste good. Angela's blog is packed. Also, she does all kinds of cool things, like educated restaurants about gluten-free/dairy-free options for their menus.

I went for something veggie-based because I was nervous about unusual types of flour and also because I love broccoli salad and have been meaning to get one up on this blog, oh, forever. Some of you may know that raw broccoli just isn't my thing. Oh, sure, I can get it down, but it's not love. Broccoli salad, however, I adore. (I guess that's what happens when you add some fat and sugar to your unloved veggies; I didn't say this salad was an act of strong moral character, okay. I only said it tasted good.)

Broccoli Salad
adapted from Angela's Kitchen
makes 6 servings
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cost: $3.00
broccoli: 1.50, raisins: .25, walnuts: .50, bacon: .50, other stuff: .25)

Note on nuts: Angela uses sunflower seeds, but I didn't have enough; The sunflower seeds would be perfect for a nut-free salad, but if nuts aren't an issue I bet you could sub a variety of different nuts in this salad

5 C broccoli florets
1/2 C raisins
1/2 C walnuts
1/3-1/2 C cooked, crumbled bacon
2 Tbsp finely minced red onion (since Kip hates onions, I left this in a separate bowl to be added according to taste (And, yes, he is obscenely spoiled.))
3/4 C mayo (you're going to need gluten-free and dairy-free if that's what you need)
1-2 Tbsp cider vinegar (I've also used balsalmic to good effect and I'm betting lemon juice would kick butt too)
2-4 Tbsp sugar (original recipe called for 4, but I scaled it back to 3 and maybe could have scaled it back a bit more)

Cook your bacon. While it's cooking, make your dressing. Combine mayo, vinegar, and sugar. Whisk. I recommend starting with 1 Tbsp vinegar and 2 Tbsp sugar and then having a taste and adjusting it according to your needs for sweet and sour.

Cut your broccoli into bite sized (or smaller) pieces. Crumble bacon and add it. Add nuts and raisins.

Drizzle dressing on and then add salt and pepper to taste (I found I liked it without either).

Chill and then eat eat eat.

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Roasted Broccoli

Cheap Eat Challenge, Part 2: Watch as our family of 6 eats on less than $10/day.

Welcome to my new favorite thing: roasted broccoli. It's just so good (and I am not, in general, a broccoli lover). And yet somehow I've managed to make it through my life up to this point without it; I've had it boiled and steamed and raw, in casseroles, soups, and stir-fries. But this, this is different.

Roasting it isn't hard to do and it sweetens the broccoli just a bit. I especially love the little crispy bits at the edges. Yum. And it's a nice thing to eat at this time of year when it seems we're constantly bombarded with sweet.

Roasted Broccoli
Serves 1-2
Prep time: 3 minutes
Cook time: 15-20 minutes
Cost: $.50

Yeah, are you ready for this, um, recipe?

 1 head broccoli, chopped into bite sized pieces
drizzle olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Drizzle olive oil on your broccoli, toss it. Salt it generously, and add pepper. Roast for 15-20 minutes or until edges are just starting to brown. (If you've chopped your bits kind of small, be sure to cut down on cooking time. Broccoli isn't as forgiving as, say, roast potatoes. Once they're burned, they're definitely burned.)

Eat 'em hot (and, yes, you can throw some other veggies into the mix as you see above. Cauliflower is similar in cooking times and instructions. Baby carrots will come out a bit crispy unless you cut them smaller, but I didn't mind).

Broccoli Barley Casserole

Cheap Eat Challenge: Watch as our family of 6 tries to eat on $6/day.

A little over a month ago, my sister announced that they were having something weird for dinner that night: farro. I thought she said 'sparrow' and agreed that that was incredibly weird. I also wondered out loud how ones goes about procuring and eating sparrow. We eventually got it straightened out. Turns out, however, that farro is just as hard to find as sparrow in Evansville. When I asked at the co-op--normally a fairly reliable source of weird food potential--the girl in charge hadn't even heard of it.

My sister suggested I use barley instead, saying that they had a similar texture. Which is what I did. And let me say that I've had barley before--mostly in soup, but this casserole really made me fall in love with it. It was chewy and perfect, and something about the textures in this casserole made me understand how vegetarians sometimes say that a meatless meal is sort of 'meaty.' For me, the barley provided a sort of meatiness. It was more toothsome and complex than something like rice would have been. Now, my brother-in-law loves this casserole so much that he wants my sister to make it every week, but for the record, and for purposes of full disclosure, Kip did not fall in love with barley in this recipe, nor did he find it to be in any way 'meaty.' So don't go telling your husbands that it's just like chicken, just tell them they have to eat it in front of the kids. Maybe they'll like it. Maybe they won't. Either way, tell them thank you if they eat it because, whether they deserve to be thanked for eating your perfectly delicious food or not, it'll help the next time around when you spring something weird on them. As long as it's not sparrow.

Broccoli Barley Casserole

Makes 9x13 casserole

Prep time: 10-15 minutes

Cook time: 45 minutes

Cost: $5.02
(olive oil: .02, onion: .10, barley: .60, broth: .10, Parmesan: 1.00, broccoli: .80, spinach: .15, garlic: .15, beans: .20, Montery Jack: .90)

4 tsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 1/2 C farro or barley

2 C vegetable or chicken broth (I used 2 bullion cubes in 2 C water)

1 1/2 C water (for the barley I ended up using about 2 or 2 1/2 C)

1 C shredded Parmesan (2 oz)

2 heads broccoli

1 C spinach, chopped

6 garlic cloves, minced

1/8 tsp red pepper flakes (these can be skipped if you don't have them; a dash of hot sauce might also do the trick)

1 14 oz. can or 1 3/4 C rehydrated white beans (I used Great Northern)

3/4 C Montery Jack cheese (the original recipe called for fontina, but we're living cheap here)

salt and pepper to taste

Heat 1 tsp of the oil in large saucepan or Dutch oven. Add oil and cook onion until very lightly browned.

Sitr in barley (or farro) and cook until lightly roasted (about 2 minutes). Stir in the broth and water and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to low and continue simmering, uncovered, stirring often, until barley is tender and remaining liquid has thickened to a creamy sauce (about 20-25 minutes). (Note: When my liquid was nearly gone, my barley was still not done, so I added 1/2-1 C more water and cooked longer.)

Take off heat and stir in Parmesan. Taste and season with salt and pepper if desired.

While the barley is simmering, put the broccoli in a microwave proof bowl with 1/2 C water, cover it with plasic wrap and microwave for 2 minutes. (Alternately, you can steam it on the stove.) Drain water off.  

In a new pot, add remaining oil, garlic and red pepper flakes. Cook for 1 minutes until sizzling. Stir in broccoli. Add spinach and stir for a minute until spinach wilts. Off heat, stir in beans and cooked barley. Taste again and adjust salt and pepper. (Note: I followed this step, but I bet you could simplify this whole thing by adding the garlic and red pepper flakes at the beginning after the onion had browned and then once the barley had cooked and you'd added the Parmesan, just throw the broccoli and white beans into the pot.)

Position oven rack 6 inches from broiler and heat the broiler. If you're using a Dutch oven, sprinkle with Montery Jack and throw it into the oven. If not, put it in a broiler safe 9x13 inch pan, then sprinkle with cheese and broil it until lightly browned, about 3-5 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes before serving.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Broccoli Alfredo

Cheap Eat Challenge: Watch as our family of 6 tries to eat on $6/day.

Alfredo isn't the type of food we think of as fitting into a cheap eat challenge. Which was kind of my point in making and posting it. I mean, no, it's not beans and rice. But it's such a decadent rich food, a food we pay a pretty penny for at restaurants, a food we even pay a pretty penny for in the frozen foods section at Walmart (yeah, I had a look this week). And it takes just as long for our waiter to bring it and for us to warm the frozen stuff up in a skillet as it does to make the real mccoy at home--with butter and cream and cheese in all their forbidden loveliness.

One of the food epitome's of my adult life was that Alfredo was really easy to make, a 15-minute meal in fact. A 15-minute meal in which you can easily serve two adults for less than $2.00/person. So why doesn't everyone make it all the time? Well, maybe it's just better in some cases to live in a little bit of ignorance. Do you really want to know that you just consumed 2/3 C cream, 2 T butter, and 1/2 C cheese? (If you don't, just pretend that sentence doesn't exist.)

Which calls forth a small confession. I thought we'd have leftovers for the next day. Um, no, we ate it all. Which is probably just as well, because the teeny half cup portion that was left that I ate later that night, it separated as cheesy creamy buttery things are wont to do.

Broccoli Alredo
adapted from The Best Recipes Cookbook
Serves 2-4 (we made our kids eat spaghetti and marinara)
Prep time: 3 minutes
Cook Time: 8 minutes
Cost: $3.30
(cream: 1.50, cheese: 1.00, broccoli: .50, butter: .30)

Note: As stated above if you make it through my ramblings, this doesn't make the best leftovers. Oh, they're still good and all, and since it separates you can poor some of the oil off, which may not be a bad thing. But it's not the same.

A word on simplicity: Traditionally this is made with fettuccine. We used spaghetti and that worked too, as would many different kinds of pasta. In The New Best Recipes Cookbook, they tell us we must make or purchase fresh fettuccine. "If money is really a concern, set aside a few hours on a Saturday afternoon to make your own homemade noodles and serve your guests genuinely fresh pasta for pennies." Pardon me, Christopher Kimball, while I roll my eyes and disentangle the toddler screaming at my ankles. If your "dinner guests" include people who are single-digit in age, spare yourself the food snobbery and use dry pasta. Look--I'm sure the homemade stuff is competely perfect (if you get it right), but our generic dry pasta was very very tasty too.

And now that I've thoroughly criticized the book from whence this recipe was inspired, let me say they had some great tips as well. In this recipe you cook the pasty to pre-aldente--you want it a little too firm and then you finish cooking it in the creamy stuff. And it's great--it sucks up some of the creaminess and the sauce has just the right amount of cling.

10-12 oz pasta
1 2/3 C cream (we used about 10 oz of pasta and thus a wee bit less cream; it makes us feel better about ourselves)
5 Tbsp butter
1 C Parmesan cheese
2 small heads broccoli

Get some water boiling. Salt it if you wish. I always forget. Add your pasta.

Chop broccoli into bite-sized pieces Put the broccoli in a microwave-safe bowl, add 1/2 C water, cover with plasic wrap and microwave for 2 1/2 minutes. You want it to have some bite when it comes out as you're going to cook it more with the cream mixture. (You don't have to microwave it; you can steam or boil it, but I think this is the fastest method and you'd be surprised how great microwaved broccoli comes out.)

While that all cooks, combine butter and 1 1/3 C cream until it is simmering very gently. You want it to reduce just a bit, but not too much. (When using spaghetti, the timing worked out just right. By the time the creamy stuff was simmering and just a bit reduced, the pasta and broccoli were ready to go in.)

When the pasta is not quite to the al dente point, drain it. (It should have some bite--the middle should still be a little hard.) Remove the broccoli from the microwave and carefully drain it as well. Add the pasta and broccoli to the cream mixture. Add the remaining 1/3 C cream, the Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste (and a little nutmeg if you're feeling feisty). Cook over low heat, stirring to combine the ingredients, until the sauce is slightly thickened. Note: You want the sauce to remain a little loose (not runny, but runny-ish to use a less pretty, but possibly clearer term) when it goes into the bowls/plates. As it cools it will thicken more. If it's totally thick when you take it off the heat, it'll end up a little dry and gummy.

Serve immediately.

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