Adventures in Soup
Apr. 7th, 2019 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrasteA couple of Christmases ago, my brother and sister-in-law gave me a slow-cooker. While I realise there are lots of things you can make in them, in practice mine is a soup pot. Partly because I love my Maillard reaction when cooking meat and cannot be bothered to brown it and then cook it for six hours, and partly because everything you put in a slow-cooker stays wet and with many dishes I find that counter-productive and irritating.
For soup, though? It is the BEST THING. You just chop everything up and throw it in and hours later there's soup and you didn't have to brown anything or stir anything or pay attention to it at all. (Of course, the fact that I could just ignore it means I feel compelled to keep walking into the kitchen and staring at it, as if that will make the time go faster.)
While I have thrown a lot of things into the slow-cooker over the years and had them come out a delicious liquid, this is my new favourite:
Cauliflower Cheese Soup
800g cauliflower
2 carrots
2 sticks of celary
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
500mls chicken stock
250g cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon of hot English mustard
Bacon, to garnish.
As for the method: you chop the vegetables into roughly equal-sized pieces, stick them in the slow-cooker with the garlic and chicken stock and go away for roughly six hours. Then you just need to grate the cheese and add it to the vegetables, along with the mustard, and blend it until smooth. (I have used a stick blender for this but it's a lot easier with a full blender or a food processor or some other device that will not leave you covered in cheese at any point.)
Credits where they are due: the origins of this recipe lie with Jamie Oliver, who used to sell a variation of it via Woolworths supermarkets here. Either Woolworths stopped buying it or Jamie stopped making it, though, which greatly annoyed me and sent me looking online for a recipe. I tweaked it a bit, mainly reducing the liquid and skipping the oil (because slow-cooker.) And I would strongly recommend not adding salt at the cooking stage - it's got a block of cheese in it and bacon on top, it's salty enough.
And I am really proud because I got my dad to eat a new kind of soup! (If this doesn't sound like an achievement you have clearly not met my dad.)
For soup, though? It is the BEST THING. You just chop everything up and throw it in and hours later there's soup and you didn't have to brown anything or stir anything or pay attention to it at all. (Of course, the fact that I could just ignore it means I feel compelled to keep walking into the kitchen and staring at it, as if that will make the time go faster.)
While I have thrown a lot of things into the slow-cooker over the years and had them come out a delicious liquid, this is my new favourite:
Cauliflower Cheese Soup
800g cauliflower
2 carrots
2 sticks of celary
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
500mls chicken stock
250g cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon of hot English mustard
Bacon, to garnish.
As for the method: you chop the vegetables into roughly equal-sized pieces, stick them in the slow-cooker with the garlic and chicken stock and go away for roughly six hours. Then you just need to grate the cheese and add it to the vegetables, along with the mustard, and blend it until smooth. (I have used a stick blender for this but it's a lot easier with a full blender or a food processor or some other device that will not leave you covered in cheese at any point.)
Credits where they are due: the origins of this recipe lie with Jamie Oliver, who used to sell a variation of it via Woolworths supermarkets here. Either Woolworths stopped buying it or Jamie stopped making it, though, which greatly annoyed me and sent me looking online for a recipe. I tweaked it a bit, mainly reducing the liquid and skipping the oil (because slow-cooker.) And I would strongly recommend not adding salt at the cooking stage - it's got a block of cheese in it and bacon on top, it's salty enough.
And I am really proud because I got my dad to eat a new kind of soup! (If this doesn't sound like an achievement you have clearly not met my dad.)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-04-08 02:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-04-09 12:23 am (UTC)