{"id":2738,"date":"2011-10-30T23:07:40","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T04:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/?p=2738"},"modified":"2011-10-31T22:08:49","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T03:08:49","slug":"beer-and-cheese-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/beer-and-cheese-soup\/","title":{"rendered":"Beer and Cheese Soup"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2742\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2742\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2742 \" title=\"Beer-and-Cheese-Soup\" src=\"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup.jpg 800w, https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup-300x268.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2742\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Beer and Cheese Soup - It&#39;s really, really, good. Here I&#39;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.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Beer and Cheese Soup.<\/strong> Sounds like a joke, right? If so, then you probably haven&#8217;t had any, or (even worse), it wasn&#8217;t as good as it could have been. This is, hands down, one of the best soups I&#8217;ve made, but considering the ingredients maybe that shouldn&#8217;t be a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s a perfectly reasonable observation, but that doesn&#8217;t diminish the goodness of the antecedent item. Raquel Welch could be thought of as just a bigger Twiggy too.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In the case of Beer and Cheese Soup, this isn&#8217;t just a white sauce on steroids, it&#8217;s a cheese sauce on steroids. No, it&#8217;s more than that. It&#8217;s terrific.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not exactly a light soup, by the way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Beer and Cheese Soup<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2745\" title=\"Beer-and-Cheese-Soup2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup2.jpg 700w, https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup2-300x255.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/strong>3 slices bacon, minced<\/li>\n<li>1\/2 cup butter<\/li>\n<li>1 medium yellow onion, diced<\/li>\n<li>1 cup carrot, diced<\/li>\n<li>1 cup all-purpose flour<\/li>\n<li>4 cups chicken broth<\/li>\n<li>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.)<\/li>\n<li>1 lb sharp or extra-sharp Cheddar, chopped into butter pat sized pieces<\/li>\n<li>2 cups half-and-half<\/li>\n<li>1\/2 teaspoon salt<\/li>\n<li>1\/2 teaspoon dry mustard (or 2tbs brown or Dijon mustard)<\/li>\n<li>1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce<\/li>\n<li>1\/2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-2751\" title=\"Beer-and-Cheese-Soup3\" src=\"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup3-300x291.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup3-300x291.jpg 300w, https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup3.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Saute the bacon over medium heat until cooked through, but not brittle. Add the butter. That&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>This is a pretty thick mixture, but you want to let it cook a bit to get the &#8220;raw&#8221; taste out of the flour. You definitely don&#8217;t want to brown anything at this stage though, so keep the heat low.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup4.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2752\" title=\"Beer-and-Cheese-Soup4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup4-300x267.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup4-300x267.jpg 300w, https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Beer-and-Cheese-Soup4.jpg 662w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>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.<\/p>\n<p>When the cheese is melted in, stir in the Half and Half.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8230;but definitely a soup, not a pudding. Heat on low for about ten minutes, stirring a bit, and you&#8217;re done.<\/p>\n<p>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!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Links \/ References<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Raven Lager: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ravenbeer.com\/default.asp?iId=HILHG\">http:\/\/www.ravenbeer.com\/default.asp?iId=HILHG<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beer and Cheese Soup. Sounds like a joke, right? If so, then you probably haven&#8217;t had any, or (even worse), it wasn&#8217;t as good as it could have been. This is, hands down, one of the best soups I&#8217;ve made, but considering the ingredients maybe that shouldn&#8217;t be a surprise. Just as the iPad is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-soup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2738"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2762,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions\/2762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}