Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Freezer Cooking: A New Cheddar Broccoli Soup

Today I took a recipe I've posted before and improved on it! It is now a new family favorite (also a big time Sadie Favorite!)!

You see, we were out of our freezer supply of my broccoli and cheese soup, but I hadn't been able to find the cheese that I used last time (or any processed cheese that I liked at all... bad processed cheese is an quick way to ruin an otherwise good recipe).

So I decided to make my own cheese sauce. I was a little nervous about how it would turn out. I actually put one of my eggplant lasagnas in the oven just in case it was a disaster. I figured if it wasn't a disaster we could have it for dinner tomorrow night. Instead, it was so good, we ended up having the soup with the lasagna (which was great because we fed Sadie before tonight's vigil Mass and planned on eating after the girls went to sleep... and then they decided that they just weren't tired... so we were starving by the time we were finally able to eat a little while ago!).

This recipe is huge! You'll need at least one large stock pot (probably two). This recipe made 11 nights worth of dinners for us (a family of four, three of who eat solids!). So that's about 33 servings (probably a little more since I tend to overestimate how much I need). Our freezer is stocked with soups now! Here's the recipe:

  • 4 lbs cheese (I used 1 lb medium cheddar, 2 lbs sharp cheddar and 1 lb monterey jack).
  • Cream of Mushroom- 9 10 ¾ oz cans
  • Cream of Broccoli- 1 10 ¾ oz can
  • Evaporated Milk- 10 cans
  • 3 26 oz bags of Frozen Broccoli
  • 1 cup flour
  • 10 cups milk
  • 5 tbs chopped garlic
  • 1 cup butter
  • 2.5 cups chicken broth
  • 3 large onions

Grate cheese and set aside.

In large stock pot melt the butter. Add the chopped garlic. Cook for 2-3 minutes. Whisk in 1 cup of flour. Add 10 cups of milk. Add 2.5 cups of chicken broth. Once the sauce is thick enough to coat back of spoon add the cheese.

After the cheese has melted add the evaporated milk, the cream of mushroom and the cream of broccoli. Stir and let the soup simmer until combined- this doesn’t take very long (I kept my oven at warm, but my oven is ancient and soup has been known to burn on the low setting).

Saute onions in a separate pan. Add onions and broccoli. Simmer until the broccoli is done (mine simmered all afternoon, but it was actually probably cooked after an hour).

Enjoy!

5 comments:

  1. This sounds so yummy! I may just have to try it now that weather is colder here!

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  2. oh I'm a house of one...I wish I could figure out how to break this down to a smaller size. If anyone else does it on smaller scale, please post!!

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  3. Just printed this, and totally going to make it. :)

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  4. Here's a smaller version list of ingredients. I would guess this would still probably be five or six servings (freezer cooking for 1!):


    1 lb cheese (8 oz cheddar and 8 oz Monterey jack)
    Cream of Mushroom- 2 can (you could substitute the cream of broccoli for one of these if you want to try it! I added it because I wanted 10 cream of mushrooms but didn’t want to go to the store!
    Evaporated milk-1 can
    A little less than ½ a bag of 26 oz frozen broccoli
    3 tbs flour
    2 cups milk
    1 tbs chopped garlic
    4 tbs butter
    ½ cup chicken broth
    1 small onion

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  5. Thank you for providing the smaller scale recipe. . .I think I'll make this for tonight's dinner!

    ReplyDelete

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