It's beer cheese soup, which sounds wildly unhealthy,
but it's actually a very healthy and tasty choice.
It does have quite a bit of cheese in it
and a bottle of beer,
but it also has all these veggies
that are cooking out in our skillet right now.
Couple of carrots, parsnips,
which is like a carrot with an attitude,
as my friend Emily says, and I think that's just perfect,
and some onion and celery, and garlic.
Now, what I do is a coarse-chop it,
throw it in the food processor
so you get this nice, fine chop,
and it's literally a couple of quarts
of vegetables cooking down in a dry skillet.
I just put it in a large non-stick skillet,
there's no fat in there yet.
We're gonna get to the fat in a minute,
we're gonna make our cheese soup base
in a separate pot so they can both be cooking
at the same time.
To our vegetable mix, we're gonna add about two teaspoons
or two-thirds of a palmful of smoked paprika
and some dry mustard.
Same amount, couple teaspoons,
two-thirds of a palmful.
A little or a lot of cayenne pepper sauce.
I like Frank's Red Hot in this one.
One bottle of beer, and when I'm cooking with beer,
I use a lager or a beer that's light in color
and light in flavor.
Bottle of beer, so 12 ounces of beer.
And I usually give that a stir
and just let it cook out a bit,
and the alcohol starts to evaporate away
and the flavor concentrates.
And then, I add about three cups
of chicken stock to this pot.
Then, you want this to come up to a boil
and start reducing.
Rapidly reduce this down.
So, in this pan, I'm melting down some butter.
I'm gonna take a quick break
and roadmap a salad we're gonna make,
but when we come back, we're going to,
just like you're making mac and cheese,
you're gonna make a simple milk sauce
with a basic roux.
Equal amounts of flour and butter.
And then, we're gonna mix in our cheese,
and then we're going to immersion-blender this
so it's super velvety and combine the two,
that's all there is to it,
and then just keep it warm. (audience applauding)
In this pot, I took four tablespoons of butter,
melted it, whisked in four tablespoons of flour.
Equal amounts of flour and butter is your base for roux.
Roux is the thickening agent.
We then added one quart of milk,
and then to that, two sacks,
12 ounces each, of already-shredded,
store-bought, just two pouches of shredded cheddar.
You could buy sharp or mild, whichever you prefer.
This is our combination of carrots,
celery, onion, parsnips, and garlic,
cooking out in our one bottle of lager beer
and our three cups of chicken stock.
See how much it's reduced?
The veggies are all now soft.
I take one of these inexpensive,
I love them 'cause we don't have to put hot liquids
in a blender anymore, immersion blenders in
and just give it a zap and make sure that
that sauce is beautiful and velvety,
and just gorgeous.
And then,
I'm gonna add a little layer of flavor to that
by stirring in about a tablespoon each
of Dijon mustard and a little Worcestershire.
Mix that in.
And then, we're gonna combine these together.
We're gonna take our reduced liquids
and our cooked vegetables,
and just slide them all into one giant
pot.
A super fun way to serve this
is with cheddar popcorn on top.
So, that's what I've got set up over here.
Turn this one off.
A pot with a lid, of course.
A little bit of oil in the bottom
of the pot with a lid.
Get it hot over medium to medium-high heat,
add your corn, put the lid on.
Very exciting, it will pop just like Jiffy Pop.
Take a quick break, we'll come right back.
(audience applauding)
When it slows to a second or two between each pop,
your corn is done, turn that off.
Now it gets really fun.
Salt, of course, we're gonna put a little salt on there.
But, they sell
cheese powder.
Yum. (audience applauds)
So, here's how I serve it up.
The cheese soup with our veggies running all through it.
It's so good.
We're gonna top the soup with cheese corn
(audience cheers)
and some chives. (audience applauding)