Speaker: Alright, let me show you this delicious, healthy and extremely tasty broccoli soup with a cheddar crouton. I want you to slice and toast about four -- well, you make as many as you want. But I did four slices of bread, I toasted them and I topped them with about an ounce of shredded cheddar cheese. I am using the yellow kind, the orange, I think it looks nice on the green. If you want to use the white cheddar, go ahead. I think a sharp cheddar is your best bet. And my favorite all time kitchen gadget here the Creme Brulee Torch. This prevents me from turning on the broiler. Why do I have to turn on the broiler and keep my oven for 20 minutes to cook four pieces of bread.
Alright, this is like pinpoint, since the bread was already toasted. I am just basically melting the cheese and giving it some beautiful color. So I think there is a great trick and I think every chef should have one of these little torches in their cabinet.
Alright, so heres our broccoli. I have got two heads of broccoli. I cut off the flowers and then the stem, I cut it in nice small pieces, so they cook nice and quick. So that was two heads and in a saucepan, I take a 4 Quart Pot, I am going to put a tablespoon of butter and a clove of garlic crushed, and I want you to turn on that heat to high. I want you to grab your wooden spoon, I want to have your quart of stock ready. So have a quart of stock open and ready, because if this butter starts to burn or the it starts to cook too much you throw your stocking.
So I want you to sizzle that garlic for just 10-15 seconds, just to kind of extract that beautiful flavor, there we go. I mean you're going to dump in one quart of any kind of stock. I am using no chicken stock here, if you are veggies or vegetarian stock of course water even, why are you using water.
Alright, into the boiling stock, I want you to leave the heat on high. I want you to add your two heads of broccoli and again the stems are chopped pretty small. The flowers at the top not necessary those get soft real quick. Alright, just tap that down.
Now, again if you think there is not enough liquid and you are attempted to add more, don't, okay. You are going to have too thin of a soup. We are not going to thicken the soup or anything, alright. Vegetable soup should be thickened with vegetables. So we are going to just leave it like that, it's on a high boil and you see that cooking down.
Now, I am going to do this for about seven-eight minutes until the thickest pieces are nice and forked under you see, it's little pulp, no, it's just about right, it still has a nice green color and here is our secret weapon. It's call an Immersion Blender. Alright, I highly recommend the metal style, I don't like the plastic ones. Alright, the better one is here in, it wasn't that expensive, this is about $30. But the bottom detaches there, it comes with the whip attachment and so forth. So easy to use and I think -- in fact I am sure, if you have one of these immersion blenders, you'll make these vegetable soups at home, they are so easy with this thing, and there is no cleaning in the stupid blender and anyone that have that beautiful experience of the boiling soup coming flying out of the top of the blender that's not very enjoyable, so that kind of eliminates that situation.
So I am just going to kind of pulse this on and off. Alright, so I am grabbing some broccoli, I am just pushing it towards the bottom with that blender on, and to a couple of minutes here of doing that, the pieces will be small enough, that you can just leave it on and just kind of tilt it up slightly and you will have a beautiful whirlpool going, and again cooking is fun in general, but some things are more fun than others. This is pretty fun, alright this is very -- I mean something is very therapeutic about it.
Can I explain it, you've got to give it a try. So there we go, this is going to make a beautiful, smooth broccoli purée. By the way I am showing you like seven soups at once here. Cauliflower, asparagus, artichoke, you name it, if you can boil a vegetable, uses exact same recipe and you can make some beautiful soups at home.
Some soups are hard to make, some soups aren't. Okay, these vegetable soups are very easy. A chicken noodle with all the spice -- but this thing, no excuse to broccoli soup. I am going to spice mine with a little red pepper, if you want to use black pepper, go ahead, I don't necessarily will like the black specs and I give that two healthy pretty good sized pinches of salt and I want cream of broccoli so I am adding cream, that was a-third of a cup, that's optional. But I really think it does make a difference, makes it nice and smooth and even gives it an even more beautiful color.
I am going to give it one last blast with the immersion blender, and again I think it takes about 30 seconds to clean and really I think it's a good investment. Top it with your cheddar crouton there, and that is really delicious. So I hope you enjoyed that, very simple, very easy, and very beautiful. Enjoy!!!
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