Scrumpsh

Today's post is inspired by all those lovely cooking bloggers out there who masterfully give detailed instructions on how to whip up exquisite recipes. Here is an attempt at my own.

After months of being extremely bored on my low-carb diet (if I see one more chicken breast...!!), I somehow had broccoli cheese soup popping in my head. While grocery shopping at Target I decided to google a few recipies, and went with a "broccoli soup" that called for a bit of cream and a lot of chicken stock. When I got home and realized it wasn't exactly the kind of soup I was going for, I re-googled and went into Gresch-mode, improvising until I figured out my new plan.

This broccoli cheddar soup is by Ree Drummond via Foodnetwork, found (here) but you can also find it on her blog at The Pioneer Woman ---beautiful blog btw.





Her Ingredients:
1 stick butter
1 whole onion
1/3 c flour
4 c whole milk
2 c half & half
1 pinch nutmeg
4 heads broccoli
salt & pepper
3 c gradded cheese
chicken broth

My beautiful broccoli from Target.




















First, I cut the tops of the broccoli into florets.














Now...Ree's recipe didn't do this, but I wanted my soup to be a little heartier (anything to fill me up on this low-carb thing), so I decided to include the stems of the broccoli. Here I removed the outer layer of skin (which can be very tough and chewy) using a peeler.














Then diced them up.














Next I diced a whole onion.














Butter's melting nicely.














Adding the onions.














Once the onions have cooked down a bit, add the flour.














When the flour has cooked-off a bit, and considerably thickened, this is what it looks like.














Now...here is where I strayed from the exact recipe considerably. First of all, I didn't exactly have 4 cups of whole milk to spare. I used only 2 cups of whole milk along with 2 cups of chicken broth and 2 cups of heavy cream (to help off-set the fact that I didn't have half & half), which equals the total 6 cups of liquid I needed, yay!














Adding the nutmeg (whoa, that's a big pinch!). I won't tell you what Caleb did with the rest of the nutmeg I left out...let's just say my kitchen smells like Christmas now ; )














And shoving the broccoli in there (stems and florets, I seriously need a bigger pot).














Caleb's little helper hand adding broccoli.














Caleb shaking in a boat-load of black pepper.

Lid on and simmer for 30 minutes. Here's where the broccoli cooks and the soup thickens up.

Okay now, I don't have a blender, so I pulled out around 3 ladle-fulls of broccoli (after the 30 minutes) and hacked away at it with my Giada knife, then added it back to the soup.

Adding the cheese. I like really really sharp cheddar...Ooo maybe next time I'll use a sharp white cheddar, yum! And yes Dad, this KRAFT cheese was the same price as the Target-brand cheese this week.

Oooey, gooey deliciousness.

Mmmm...

Git in mah belleh! And there you have it. I had two bowls as soon as it was ready. Boy oh boy I'm pretty sure I could eat this every every day! Yum. And cubing the stems really made a difference, it tasted like little chunks of potatoes (oh how I've missed you). Hope you try it too, cuz it's super easy and delish.