Thick and Creamy Cheddar Broccoli Soup

I’m sure it’s starting to feel like fall somewhere in the U.S., but here in Seattle, it doesn’t feel like fall to me yet… I think the smoke that has forced me to keep my windows closed (with towels stuffed in the cracks) has kept it too toasty in here to feel like fall. Seattlepi.com has a slideshow of photos that showcase some of the worst of it. I admit I’m partial to early fall, but once it gets colder than about 65°F, I’m out. A few years in Seattle has made me unable to tolerate the cold AND the heat! So today I’m going to post this cheddar broccoli soup recipe in the spirit of the impending fall season.

Before this recipe, every time I had tried making cheddar broccoli soup, it ended up gritty. No matter what I tried, the cheese stirred in at the end never really incorporated. I gave up on it for a while.

After a particularly frustrating evening in which I destroyed the homemade mac-n-cheese I was trying to make (Overcooked gluten free pasta and vigorous stirring do not mix), I had an idea.

The cheese sauce I’d made for the mac-n-cheese was awesome. Thick, totally smooth, and very creamy. I ate the mac and cheese for the cheese sauce alone that day. What if I applied the same logic to the dreaded gritty cheddar broccoli soup?

In short, I ended up preparing this as a cheesy base with the vegetables sauteed on the side. The veggies stay crisp and the soup base is quite smooth. I can’t say that this is a traditional approach to making cheddar broccoli soup, but it turned out great! This pairs really well with a side of crusty bread.

Preparation & Photos

Wash and assemble your ingredients. You can mix the water and milk together to save time later.

Chop your vegetables accordingly and grate the cheddar cheese. You can save a lot of time here if you have a food processor or if you can buy pre-shredded carrots or cheese.

Fry up the bacon in one medium or large saucepan until most of the fat is rendered. Remove from the pan, crumble and set aside.

Sauté the onions, carrots and celery in the bacon fat for about 10 minutes over medium heat. If you run low on oil, you can add olive oil.

Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant – about 2 minutes.

Add the broccoli florets and stems – sauté until the florets are done to your liking. For me, this was when they still had some crispness left to them – about 20 minutes on medium-low heat.

Make the roux. Melt the butter in a separate large saucepan. Add the gluten free flour a little bit at a time and fully incorporate into the butter.

Let the fully incorporated flour roux cook for about 4 minutes.

Start adding the milk and water mixture slowly and stir until fully incorporated. Initially, it will clump up like this:

It will get a little bit less clumpy as you go:

By about 1 cup of milk, it starts to look more like you’d expect:

After all the milk and water are added, you should see something like this:

Once you’ve fully incorporated all of the milk and water, including any extra volume you’ve decided to add to thin out the soup, you can start adding the shredded cheddar a little bit at a time. Stir thoroughly and often to make sure the cheese melts and mixes well.

When you’re done adding the cheese, if you haven’t added extra liquid, the texture looks roughly like this:

Stir all of the sautéed vegetables and crumbled bacon into the cheesy soup base.

And there you have it! Serve with bread or a light main course.

Substitutions

Thinning the soup out

When I say this is a thick soup, I really mean it. If you prefer a thinner cheddar broccoli soup, you should be able to add extra volume of milk, water or stock during the soup base preparation. Add the liquid before the cheese incorporation (With the milk).

Cheese

I have some ideas that I haven’t tested, but suspect could be good. You could substitute in mild cheddar if you prefer a milder cheese flavor and a stronger bacon flavor. White cheddar should also work, but you will not get the yellow color pictured here. Extra sharp cheddar would be strong, but probably awesome, too!

Use less cheese if you feel so inclined. 🙂

I haven’t tested this with non-dairy cheese, so I have no guidance to offer on that.

Carrots

If you can’t get shredded carrots, I think it’ll be just fine. Not everyone has a food processor, my grocery store doesn’t sell them pre-grated, and I am way too lazy to grate carrots 9 times out of 10. If you don’t have a food processor, you can be more industrious than me and grate the carrots, or you can dice them finely and make sure they’re fully cooked before stirring the vegetables into the soup base.

Bacon – Vegetarian or another meat?

So, this one is tricky. When I looked into non-meat alternatives to bacon, many of them are made with wheat. If you need to be gluten free and want a vegetarian option, be very careful when subbing a vegetarian/vegan bacon option in. Your best bet might be to omit it entirely and add extra salt to taste to compensate for the salt and umami it contributed.

If you want to keep meat in the soup but don’t have bacon on hand, I think an equivalent amount of finely diced ham would also be good here. Make sure you fry it like the bacon. I haven’t tested that myself, so consider your personal tastes before making the substitution.

Gluten free Flour in the roux

I’ve made this with three gluten free all-purpose flour blends: Krusteaz, Bob’s Red Mill and Better Batter.

If you don’t have gluten free flour on hand, corn starch should work, but I haven’t tested it myself. Use your best judgement as you’re preparing the roux as you may need to adjust quantities. There’s enough cheese in here that I do not expect that it will impact the flavor.

Also, if you don’t need to be gluten free, you can certainly use standard all-purpose flour.

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