The Great American Slow Cooker Book (14 page)

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If you’d like, give the soup a savory twist by adding a small amount of ground cumin: ¼ teaspoon for the small batch, ½ teaspoon for the medium, and ¾ teaspoon for the large.

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In storage, the orange zest can cause the cream to curdle. If you intend to make the soup and save back servings in the fridge or freezer, omit the zest from the soup and use it as a garnish in the bowls.

Serve It Up!
Ladle the soup over
homemade croutons
in the bowls. Also grate Manchego or Pecorino over each serving.

1
Mix the broth, broccoli florets, milk, onion, thyme, nutmeg, salt, and pepper in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours or on low for 5 hours, or until the broccoli is beyond tender, extremely soft.

2
Puree the soup with an immersion blender right in the slow cooker; or working in batches as necessary, ladle it into a large blender, blend until smooth, and return to the slow cooker. Stir in the cheese, then cover and cook on low for 30 minutes, until the cheese has melted and the soup is hot.

TESTERS’ NOTES

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A family favorite, this soup can be spiked by using jalapeño Cheddar, or it can have a sweet, aromatic finish with port wine Cheddar. Although you don’t need to use an aged Cheddar or an expensive white Cheddar, you should also avoid any Cheddar-like processed cheese.

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If you want to go more Wisconsin with this soup, cut the broth in half and use an amber beer or a lager to replace the missing liquid.

1
Stir the sweet potatoes, broth, potatoes, brown sugar, thyme, salt, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon stick together in the slow cooker until the brown sugar dissolves. Cover and cook on low for 5 hours, or until all the potatoes are beyond soft. Discard the cinnamon stick.

2
Stir the cream into the soup. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup right in the slow cooker; or working in batches, ladle the soup into a large blender, cover, and blend until smooth before pouring all of the soup back into the slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 15 minutes to warm up.

TESTERS’ NOTES

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Sweet and earthy, this soup would be the best when you’re a tad under the weather. Better yet, make it when you’re hale, then freeze some individual servings for when you need it.

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For even cooking results, dice both the sweet potatoes and the yellow potatoes into ¼-inch pieces.

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You can use regular sweet potatoes, although the soup will be garishly orange—sweeter, but not as earthy. You’ll want to balance it by drizzling some bottled red pepper sauce over the servings.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
White sweet potatoes are popular in the American South—and elsewhere sometimes confused with the white sweet potatoes popular in Asia. The white varieties take longer to mature and develop fewer sugars, resulting in a subtly savory flavor.

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
Why put the soup back into the slow cooker after pureeing it with the cream? Because the puree has cooled off a bit and the cream needs a few moments of heat to get rid of its raw, unfinished taste.

1
Mix the mushrooms, broth, chopped shallots, sage, thyme, salt, and pepper in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours or on low for 6 hours, or until the mushrooms are quite soft.

2
Stir the cream into the soup. Puree it by using an immersion blender right in the slow cooker or by ladling it in batches as necessary into a large blender and blending until smooth before pouring it all back into the slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 15 minutes to heat through. Serve by sprinkling chopped chives over bowlfuls, if desired.

TESTERS’ NOTES

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Although this is a fine soup for a winter evening, it’s also wonderful to have a stash in the freezer, saved in 2- or 3-cup increments, for recipes that call for cream of mushroom soup.

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You can certainly use cremini or brown button mushrooms here, although the soup will be darker, not the traditional creamy white.

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Add up to 2 tablespoons brandy for a little kick.

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
For almost all of these creamy soups, you can substitute light cream or half-and-half for the heavy cream. However, never use fat-free half-and-half, as it’s stocked with sweeteners and artificial thickeners.

1
Put the bacon in a large high-sided skillet or sauté pan set over medium heat and fry, tossing occasionally, until crisp and brown, between 4 and 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate with a slotted spoon, leaving the grease behind. Chill the bacon in the fridge.

2
Add the onion to the skillet and cook, stirring often, until softened, between 3 and 6 minutes. Add the garlic, stir well, and sprinkle the flour over everything. Stir over the heat for 30 seconds, then whisk in the broth in a slow, steady stream. Continue cooking, stirring all the while, until thickened and bubbling.

3
Scrape the contents of the skillet into the slow cooker. Stir in the parsnips, broth, and wine. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours, until the parsnips are tender.

4
Use a slotted spoon to remove some of the cooked parsnips: about ½ cup from the small batch, 1 cup from the medium batch, or 1½ cups from the large. Stir the cream into the remainder of the soup, then puree it, either by using an immersion blender in the slow cooker or by ladling it into a large blender in batches; cover and blend until smooth before pouring it back into the slow cooker.

5
Stir in the chilled bacon and the dill as well as the reserved parsnips. Cover and cook on high for 30 minutes to heat through.

TESTERS’ NOTES

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Parsnips cook up into an appealing soup; their earthy flavors carry distinctly bright notes. When those flavors are combined with cream and bacon, they make a great meal, particularly with a glass of beer on the side.

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Unless you have a gigantic skillet, you will need to fry the bacon in batches.

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We don’t advocate using frozen chopped onions here. The onions need as much flavor as possible to stand up to all that richness.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
Dry vermouth is a white wine delicately flavored with herbs and aromatics. It’s also fortified, sometimes with a little brandy or other distillate. It should be a pantry staple; it can be stored for up to a year, maybe more. White wine, by contrast, will start to turn—that is, oxidize—within an hour of opening, even if you stopper it and refrigerate the bottle. In all but the fussiest recipes, vermouth can be substituted for dry white wine. It’s a bit more savory, but it does exceptionally well in slow-cooker recipes where sweeter flavors tend to be amplified by the cooking method.