In class we have been focused on making soups and I decided there was no better way to practice than to make a soup from my textbook, The Professional Chef. I picked one we wouldn’t make in class, just for variety. After polling the household for their top picks out of several soups in the book, it was clear the beer cheese soup was the easy winner. And I was happy to make it.
I even fried croutons to accompany the soup. Which, I didn’t know you could fry croutons. But it certainly makes for some delicious results.
The soup took me about 2 hours to make. There was a great deal of mise en place, to say the least. Also, this is with me not using homemade clarified butter or chicken stock. Because both of those things take hours longer and while I wanted to stick to the recipe, I didn’t have the time or the chicken bones to be 100% accurate. Not to mention, the final product was pretty good with regular butter and store bought stock.
Anyway, it was a great experience, to say the least. I used a massive sieve for the first time. I made a blond roux the right way (melt the butter first, add the flour). I didn’t burn the cheese when I added it to the soup. I seasoned it properly. Even my taste testers were satisfied after one round of taste testing.
The final result was delicious!
I was extremely happy with how it turned out. It did take forever, but wow it did taste good. Although I’ve done a fair amount of cooking before, I never made a lot of soups. This section in class has definitely made me more comfortable with how soups are constructed and even how to troubleshoot soups should they become the wrong consistency or the seasoning goes astray.
