I plant broccoli most fall/winters and usually end up with too much. This is a healthy and tasty soup
- no cream - well worth making even if you don't have a glut and need to buy the stuff.
Works great even if the broccoli has started to show yellow flowers. (Peter)

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Broccoli Soup

Ingredients

One or two heads of broccoli
2 lbs potatoes
2 or 3 white or brown onions
3 or 4 cloves garlic
Vegetable stock ~ 6 cups
1 cup white wine
Water or stock ~ 4 cups
2 bouillon cubes or 2T bouillon dust
2-3 t cumin
1 lemon
Salt and pepper
Dill, parsley, and or coriander
1/2 t ground cayenne peppers or similar
Chicken meat pieces fried separately (optional)
Garlic toast

Tip: Make your own stock by boiling up all the unused vegetables in the fridge: celery tops, carrots, onions, cauliflower and so on. Or, if not cooking for vegetarians, use a good beef bone, chicken or pork stock. I often have a box of this commercial stuff bought on sale. But it's best to dilute it a bit.

Use one of these hand blenders to combine ingredients. Not too much - you want texture.

This soup is a good use for broccoli that has been left a little too long (as I did in 2019)

Method

1. Chop and fry the onions for 7 minutes or so then add the crushed garlic and cook another 2 or 3 minutes - stirring now and again with a wooden spoon.

2. Tip in the white wine, stir around, then add your diced potatoes (I will leave the skins on if they look clean after I have scrubbed them).

Scoop fat off the top.

3. Then add the stock and water and bouillon cubes (if using) and half a teaspoon of hot chili (or your home-made sambal oelek).

Tip: I like to use bouillon cubes in my soup. Technically it makes the thing non-vegetarian but you get a great salt and flavor kick. They generally have MSG - but they (FDA among others) changed their mind on that and now say it's quite safe.

4. Then chop and add about 2/3 of your broccoli (reserving some for later), bring to boil and simmer maybe an hour or more.

5. If you are going to add some protein like chopped chicken then now is a good time to chop it and give it a flash fry with some salt. Then set aside - it's OK if it goes cold.

You can also use this time to cook toast, butter it, let it cool, then scrape the back with garlic (= "garlic toast").
I prefer Sprouts' rosemary sour dough for this purpose.

6. When the broccoli and potatoes are very soft go fetch your hand blender (doubtless from some cupboard way out of reach) and blend everything up.
Don't go nuts with it though - you want some texture. And test for consistency - not too thick like porridge, not too thin like gruel - but just right.

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7. Then chop your remaining broccoli into florets and tip those in along with the juice of your lemon and chopped parsley and chopped dill or whatever herbs you have in the garden right now.

8. Cook for a couple of minutes (you want your florets to still have tone) then test for flavor and adjust salt/sugar/sour/heat as needed.

9. Spoon over the chicken pieces (if using) and serve with chopped coriander (cilantro) and that garlic toast you made earlier.