This recipe is adapted from my all time favorite magazine, Family Fun. When I first came upon it, I seriously doubted that my kids would love it. After all, it’s green and it’s made from little trees. But somehow the green factor played to my advantage and the kids thought it looked ‘cool’. (Hey, if they want to call it alien soup–fine by me.) Plus, it calls for mashed potatoes to make the soup thick and creamy so it has a bit of a different type of texture and taste that the kids liked. The vegetables in this are eventually processed and so you can hardly tell that you’re eating little trees, or onions or whatever else would otherwise be unpalatable if served whole.
On a side note, this is an excellent recipe for leftovers. If you’ve made homemade chicken stock or mashed potatoes recently, make sure to put aside extras just for this soup! It is delicious with hearty bread.
You will need:
1 cup of water plus 1 cup of chicken broth (homemade or canned)
1 onion or shallot, sliced very thin
2 1/2 cups fresh chopped broccoli or 1 package of frozen broccoli florets
1 teaspoon of salt
4 cups of milk
1 small baked potato, or 1/4 cup leftover mashed potatoes, or 1/4 cup instant mashed potato flakes
3 tablespoons of butter
Just a pinch of paprika
Directions:
Heat the stock mixture over medium heat, add the onion, broccoli, and salt, and cook about ten minutes or until tender. Turn the heat down and use a hand blender to puree the ingredients. (If you don’t have a hand blender, you can process the mixture using a food processor. Do 1/2 at a time.) Heat the milk in a large saucepan until bubbles form on the edges. Stir into the milk the potato, butter, salt and paprika. Carefully simmer for three minutes. Stir in the pureed broccoli and onion, taste for seasoning, and ladle into individual bowls.