Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Chicken Broccoli Cheddar Soup and Almond Milk Ice Cream

Tonight was full of new stuff. We had a chicken, broccoli and cheddar soup for dinner, and for dessert, almond milk ice cream. Both were gambles since I hadn't made either before, but they turned out pretty good considering. The soup was really creamy and chock full of broccoli, which in short means it was delicious.


Ingredients:

1 cup onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups chicken broth
1 package of broccoli, chopped
2.5 cups milk (we used 2%)
1/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp pepper
8 oz cheddar cheese, sliced
2 chicken breasts, chopped to bite size pieces


Procedure:

1. Sweat onions and garlic in a non stick sauce pan over medium high heat
2. Add broth and broccoli
3. Bring to a boil then reduce to medium heat
4. Cook for 10 minutes
5. Fry chicken breasts in a separate pan 
6. In a separate bowl mix milk and cornstarch till well blended
7. Add to saucepan
8. Cook approximately 5 minutes or until it slightly thickens
9. Add pepper
10. Remove from heat and add cheese
11. Stir till it melts
12. Blend 1/3 of soup and return to pan.
13. Add chicken to soup.
14. Stir smooth and serve

Pictures!

Onions and garlic in pan

Adding broccoli and broth


Marc slicing up the cheese from a block

After adding the milk and cornstarch mixture

We used an immersion blender to blend some of it. Much easier than moving it back and forth between pan and blender.




For dessert I experimented with Almond Milk. It's super yummy by itself, so I wanted to see how it would work as a substitute for whole milk in ice cream. If you're unfamiliar with almond milk you can read more about it and how it compares to cow's milk here. Ice cream is really easy to make, so long as you have something with which to churn it. Lucky for us, my mother gifted us one for Christmas a few years back. Here's the recipe I used for this:

Ingredients

1.25 cups heavy cream
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 and 1/8 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups almond milk

Procedure

1. Combine almond milk and sugar in a large bowl
2. Mix until sugar dissolves
3. Add in heavy cream and vanilla
4 Stir to combine
5. Add to ice cream maker and churn for 20-25 minutes until thickened
6. Freeze 


Pictures:

In the ice cream maker

After getting out of the ice cream maker, but before heading to the freezer


I tried to take a picture of it dished up for me this evening. Alas, after three attempts and none of them coming out good I gave up and ate my ice cream. It's really important to enjoy these things - especially when the wee one is in bed! The ice cream was awesome. It was creamy and tasty without feeling oily or greasy. Marc commented that things he would have changed included: putting more into his bowl and adding nuts as a mix-in to the ice cream. I'll take those as some good criticisms!


Have you ever used almond milk? Would you try it?

2 comments:

  1. But how was the ice cream?! Inquiring minds want to know!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh...just short of PHENOMENAL! I suppose I should mention that, huh?

    ReplyDelete