American Cheese Soup

You have not lived until you’ve had American Cheese Soup. It’s true. Ask my husband. He will agree with me, pinky promise style. It’s comfort food like you’ve never had before. This soup will warm you from the inside-out when you’re feeling down and out, or when the weather is wet and cold.

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American Cheese Soup

Serves: 4 to 6
Preptime: About 2 Hours (don’t worry you’re not cooking the whole time, and this includes chopping up your veggies)

Things you’ll need to get the job done:
Stock Pot or Large Sauce Pan
Dry and Liquid Measuring Cups
Measuring Spoons
Whisk
Large Bowl
Ladle
Food Processor
Sieve or Soup Strainer (NOT a mustache)
Spatula
Small Bowl
Small Spoon (teaspoon, soup spoon, whatev)

Ingrediants:
1/2 Cup Butter
1 Cup Diced Onion
1 Cup Diced Celery
3/4 Cup Diced Carrots
1/4 Cup  All Purpose Flour (We use Gluten Free AP Flour)
32 Ounces Chicken Stock
1 Cup  Heavy Cream
12 Slices American Cheese
2 Teaspoons  Dry Mustard
White Pepper and Salt to taste

Most of this is stuff that you keep in your fridge and pantry on a regular basic, but if you don’t have everything you need, I’ll wait for you to run to the store real quick.

To start, dice your veggies. You’re going to want them to everything to be a small and even dice. This cuts down on your cooking time and all of your veggies will cook evenly. If you loathe chopping things up, grocery stores sell onions, celery and carrots already chopped up and ready for soup. These can be found in the produce section, or in the freezer section. As a side note: this combination of onion, celery and carrots is called a mirepoix (pronounced meer-pwah). Mirepoix is a French term. A lot of soups, stews, sauces and stocks begin this way. Take this fancy new word you’ve learned, and work it into your everyday chit-chat.

Now that you’ve got your veggies chopped up and measured out and we’ve learned a new fancy cooking word, let’s continue. Plop your butter in your stock pot and melt it over medium heat. Let it melt completely. The smell of melting butter takes me back to the days when I had to stand on a chair to help cook.

Once your butter is nice and melted, throw in your mirepoix. Your mirepoix is going to cook for about five minutes. You want your veggies to be nice and tender, but not brown. If you’re veggies are browning instead of getting tender, turn down your heat. Another side note: the veggies in a mirepoix are known as aromatic vegetables, so your home is going to fill with great smells as your veggies get tender.

It’s time to add the flour. Sprinkle your flour over the tender veggies. You’re going to let this cook for a few minutes (3-5), stirring occasionally to keep anything from getting burnt or too brown. This is creating your roux (rue), another fancy French culinary term. A roux is a combination of flour and fat (in this case melted butter), and it thickens soups, stews and so on.

Now that you’ve got your roux on, it’s time to whisk in the chicken stock. Keeping whisking until your soup comes to a boil. Once things come to a boil, reduce the heat so the boil slows to a simmer. Let your soup simmer and thicken for the next 45 minutes.

While your soup is simmering and thickening, set up your food processor, place your large bowl next to the food processor and set your sieve or strainer on top of the bowl. If you don’t have a food processor, a blender will work. It’s also a good time to measure out your dry mustard, place it in the small bowl with a spoon and set it aside for later. Let’s talk about the mustard for a minute. If you’re not a huge fan of mustard, cut the amount down to 1 Teaspoon. You can always add more if you’d like.

You’ve got the next 40 minutes to take a break, cook something else, watch TV, read, whatever moves you. No napping. The nap will come after you have gobbled up this amazing dish you’ve spent the afternoon making. I’ll see you in a bit.

Welcome back. It’s time for the real fun to begin. In about 20 minutes, you are going to be sitting down with your creamy American Cheese Soup and loving life.

Time to process your soup. You’re going to do this batches. Ladle some of the soup into the processor, and puree. You want it to be silky smooth. Pour the puree into the sieve, and allow it to drain into the bowl below. You may have to help this process along by gently rubbing the ladle against the sieve to press the soup through. The sieve will catch any bits (like celery strings) that didn’t puree. If you have a super-duper food processor, you probably won’t need to strain the soup. Repeat this process until all of your soup is pureed. Use your spatula to make sure you get it all.

Pour the soup back into your stock pot, and bring it back up to a simmer.

Measure your heavy cream into a liquid measuring cup. Add a ladle of the soup to the measuring cup and whisk the cream and soup together. Add another ladle of soup, and whisk. Now take your cream and soup mixture and slowly pour it into your soup as you briskly whisk the soup. Yet again, another side note: this process is called the liaison method. The liaison method is used to keep the milk from curdling when it’s added to the hot liquid. This process is also used when adding eggs to a hot mixture to keep them from cooking like scrambled eggs.

Allow your soup to return to a simmer. While you’re waiting, you can unwrapped all of your cheese slices, so they are ready to go.

Cheese time! Place 3 or 4 slices of cheese on the surface of the soup. Let the cheese sit there for about 30 seconds to get nice and warm. Push the slices of cheese down under the surface of the soup, and whisk them until they have completely melted. Repeat this process until all of the cheese has been added. Make sure you’re whisking the cheese thoroughly between batches so that you don’t scorch your beautiful soup. I like to reduce my soup to a really low temperature from here on out to make sure I don’t burn my soup.

You’re almost done. Take a spoon full of your soup and add it to the bowl with mustard. Now, mix it up to make a paste. Add another spoon full of soup and stir it in. Make sure there are no lumps in your mustard paste. Once your mustard paste is silky smooth, whisk it into your soup.

This is very important! Take a taste of your soup. Let it sit in your mouth for a minute to identify the flavors. Based on your taste test, decide if you need to add more mustard. If you do, make another paste, add a little bit at a time, and taste it along the way. It’s also time to add the salt and pepper. How much is totally up to you. Some of you will want a little of each, some will want a little salt and a lot of pepper, and some of you will want none. Some of you may even want to add in a dash of pepper sauce or Worcestershire. This is your soup, so it’s totally your call.

Once you’ve seasoned your soup to perfection, ladle it into a bowl (bowls if you’re sharing). If you’d like, you can garnish your soup with diced bell peppers (I like red bells for the color and sweetness. We didn’t have red, so I used green), and/or croutons (we make our own out of Gluten Free bread and a little butter and season salt).

Take a moment to admire your work of art. Lean over the bowl, and take a big deep breath. Doesn’t that smell auh-mazing? Say a little prayer; I recommend something very short because you’re probably drooling at this point.

It’s time! Dig in. Enjoy your soup. Try not to hork it down all at once so you can enjoy the flavor layers you created with your tasting and seasoning.

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I know that took a bit of time, but isn’t the world a much better place now that you’ve indulged in American Cheese Soup? And, hey! Not only have you made a fantastic dish, but you’ve learned a lot of fancy culinary words. Those words may come in handy the next time you play Trivial Pursuit.

PS. I have a dear friend, who if he happened to read this post, is dying right now. DY-ING. He loathes Corelle with an unbelievable amount of passion. If you really wanted to get back at him for something, all you’d have to do is send him a set of Corelle in a wicker (wicker is right up there with Corelle in his book) basket, and his day would be ruined – maybe even his week.

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