Broccoli Soups

Mmmm broccoli soup. We all love it around here. Full of vitamins, easy to cook up, and many different ways to cook it. This winter I've tried three different recipes.

The simplest one I found is by Gordon Ramsay and the instructions are to 1) boil the broccoli, 2) drain and reserve the liquid, 3) puree the broccoli, adding in as much cooking water as needed to reach desired consistency, 4) season with salt and pepper to taste, drizzle with olive oil, 5) enjoy. You can fancy it up by pouring it into a bowl that has some goat cheese and walnuts waiting. Simple, delicious, and light.

The next recipe I tried is a rich Cream of Broccoli and Cheddar Soup. Because there's a roux it ends up having a thicker texture and makes for a hearty soup. This is the only one of the three that wouldn't work on a low-carb diet since there's a good amount of flour in it. I made this soup a few weeks ago and served it with a side of quinoa pancakes. The kids liked this one the best and it had the most mild broccoli flavor of the three. The other bonus is that it calls for cooked broccoli which makes it a great leftovers recipe if you happen to have some in the fridge.

Smooth Broccoli Cheddar Soup is the one I made most recently is my favorite at this point. It's kind of a mid-point between the two previous recipes. It boils up the broccoli along with a few other goodies in a broth, so there are more complex flavors than with the simple broccoli puree, and rather than a roux it's only made creamy by adding cheese and cream so not quite as heavy. I pureed it in my BlendTec on the soup setting which made it incredibly smooth as you can see from the photo.

And for all of these soup recipes, bacon always makes for an excellent garnish. There's really very little that bacon doesn't pair well with!

Cream of Broccoli and Cheddar Soup (with roux)

• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1-1/2 cups 2% milk
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1 cup cooked chopped fresh or frozen broccoli
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions

1. In a medium pot, saute onions in butter until tender.
2. Whisk in the flour, salt and pepper until blended.
3. Gradually whisk in milk and broth.
4. Bring to a boil while stirring constantly; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until desired thickness.
5. Add broccoli, stirring until heated through.
6. Remove from the heat and stir in cheese until melted. (Don't put it back on the stove to boil after the cheese has been added or it will get a grainy texture.)

Smooth Broccoli Cheddar Soup (no flour)

Lightly inspired by Eating Keto

• 3 cups chicken broth
• 2 large broccoli bunches, chopped. (I peel the stems and chop them up as well)
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped
• 1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
• 1 cup heavy cream
• fresh cooked bacon bits (optional)
• chopped green onions (optional)
• salt, pepper & garlic powder to taste

Directions

1. Combine chicken broth, broccoli and onion and bring to a boil. 
2. Turn down heat, cover, and let simmer for 15 min or until the veggies are soft.
3. Put everything into a blender and puree. Depending on the size of your blender container this might need to be done in a few batches. Try not to fill more than 1/2 full at a time. Alternately, take a handheld stick blender to your pot and blend until smooth.
4. Return the puree to the pot over low heat. Slowly add in the shredded cheese stirring until melted, and then add in the heavy cream. Heat until steamy; try not to let it boil since that can ruin the cheese. Season to taste with salt, pepper and garlic powder.
5. Serve topped with more cheddar cheese, bacon bits and/or green onions.

Green Day

It's a cold, damp, cloudy Saturday afternoon and half of our family has a bad case of the fevery sniffles. A perfect day for hubby to surprise us all with a few brand new healthy recipes made in our brand new blender! Today's green menu included Creamy Spinach Avocado Soup and Popeye Ice Cream.

One great feature of the blender is that it can blend so quickly as to actually heat up soups. Veggies out of the fridge with cold water out of the tap resulted in steamy soup in a single step! The texture of the soup was very smooth and creamy, the flavors blended together beautifully, and it was very, very garlicky (which is never a bad thing when you have a bad cold!). If you don't have a comparable blender I'd imagine that you might be able to use a good food processor to blend everything together and then heat on a stove top, but I haven't tried that yet.

For desert, hubby used another option on the blender to make some one-step ice cream. The blade spins more slowly on this setting in order to blend the ice with a minimal amount of melting. A main ingredient in the ice cream is fresh spinach which made it a vibrant green color! Other than for the color I wouldn't have guessed that there was anything different in the homemade ice cream than the traditional ingredients of vanilla ice cream. The kids called it 'icy green slime' and loved their portions!


These recipes are adapted from the BlendTec cookbook.

Creamy Spinach Avocado Soup


Makes 2 large bowls of soup


Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 2 cups spinach
• 1 avocado
• 1 stalk celery
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp dry red pepper flakes
• 2 cloves garlic
• pinch salt

Blend all ingredients until steamy on the Soup setting. Garnish with additional chopped spinach, mushrooms or red peppers.

Popeye Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup cream, half and half, milk or milk substitute
• 1 scoop protein powder
• 2 tbsp honey (or sweetener of choice)
• 1 cup spinach
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 4 cups ice

Place all ingredients into the blender in the order listed and secure lid. Blend on the Ice Cream setting. Serve immediately or store in freezer.