Beer and Cheese Soup

Beer and Cheese Soup - It's really, really, good. Here I've garnished it with a slice of bread and a sprinkling of cayenne...not enough to make it hot, but just enough to add a little bite.

Beer and Cheese Soup. Sounds like a joke, right? If so, then you probably haven’t had any, or (even worse), it wasn’t as good as it could have been. This is, hands down, one of the best soups I’ve made, but considering the ingredients maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise.

Just as the iPad is just a bigger iPod, you can say that soups, especially cream soups, are just bigger batches of sauces. In both cases it’s a perfectly reasonable observation, but that doesn’t diminish the goodness of the antecedent item. Raquel Welch could be thought of as just a bigger Twiggy too.

In the case of Beer and Cheese Soup, this isn’t just a white sauce on steroids, it’s a cheese sauce on steroids. No, it’s more than that. It’s terrific.

It’s not exactly a light soup, by the way.

Beer and Cheese Soup

  • 3 slices bacon, minced
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 medium yellow onion, diced
  • 1 cup carrot, diced
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 4 cups chicken broth
  • 1 (12-ounce) beer (in honor of Halloween, which it was today, I used Raven, a Southern German lager brewed in honor of Edgar Allen Poe by a Baltimore brewery. Good choice.)
  • 1 lb sharp or extra-sharp Cheddar, chopped into butter pat sized pieces
  • 2 cups half-and-half
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard (or 2tbs brown or Dijon mustard)
  • 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
  • 1/2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper

Saute the bacon over medium heat until cooked through, but not brittle. Add the butter. That’s an 1/8th of a pound of butter, but be brave. Bring the butter up to bubbling heat, then add the diced onions and carrots and a pinch of salt. Cook for five minutes or until soft. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring moderately, for five minutes on low heat.

This is a pretty thick mixture, but you want to let it cook a bit to get the “raw” taste out of the flour. You definitely don’t want to brown anything at this stage though, so keep the heat low.

Add in both the beer and the chicken stock and stir until smooth. Bring that up to a gentle boil and add in the slices of cheese. A lot of people want you to grate the cheese, which is a great idea, but a lot of work. Stirring in butter pat sized pieces is a fair amount of work too, so you take your choice.

When the cheese is melted in, stir in the Half and Half.

Add the Worcestershire sauce, salt, cayenne, and mustard and adjust as needed. Add a cup of water if needed to thin the soup, which should be thick…but definitely a soup, not a pudding. Heat on low for about ten minutes, stirring a bit, and you’re done.

You really want to serve this with a sliced baguette or loaf of French bread, and of course, another bottle of Raven to go with it. Happy Halloween!

Links / References