If you are looking for creative ways to serve up vegetables, then this right here is your answer! Please do me a favor though and don’t lie to your reluctant eaters about the veggies in this dish. If you want to wait until after they gobble it up, that is fine, but make it known that the deliciousness in this soup is broccoli (and cheese and bacon of course!). And when cheese and bacon are involved, it’s hard to go wrong. 
Enjoy!
Broccoli Cheese Soup (with bacon!)
Serves: 6-8
Ingredients
- 3 slices raw bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces (locally sourced recommended)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ¼ cup diced onion
- 3 tablespoons whole wheat flour
- 1 ¼ pounds raw broccoli, cut into 2-inch pieces
- 4 cups chicken broth (homemade recommended)
- 1 cup milk
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Pepper, to taste
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 1 cup freshly shredded cheddar cheese
- Optional garnish: Extra cooked bacon
Instructions
- In a large soup pot over medium heat, cook the bacon pieces until brown and crisp, about 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add the olive oil and diced onion and allow it to cook and soften for another minute.
- Turn to medium-low, whisk in the flour, and cook while stirring for 1 to 2 minutes being careful not to let the flour burn.
- Add the broccoli pieces, broth, milk, salt, and pepper to the pot. Bring to a boil and then simmer on medium-low for 10 minutes.
- Blend until smooth with a hand immersion blender (or by transferring to a countertop blender in batches).
- Stir in the heavy cream and shredded cheese and serve warm. (You can freeze any leftovers.)
Notes
We recommend organic ingredients when feasible.
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Hmmm…the pic looks like it’s more cheesy, but mine turned out a lot more broccoli’ish (is that a word? LOL!) I couldn’t taste the cheese at all. My hubby liked it, but I would’ve preferred it more cheesy tasting. I had about 1& 1/4 lbs. of broccoli, and didn’t even use all of that because I cut a lot of the stems off. Any thoughts?
Hi there. Using a sharper cheddar might help.
I enjoyed using your recipe as a starting point…I actually used equal parts of Milk and Chicken Broth and tripled the cheese and used one pound of bacon and then added 2 blocks of Philadelphia cream cheese….and A LOT of Ground Pepper–oh and diced up some carrots for color….Holy Toledo!! YUMMY!!!! I did have to add several tablespoons of cornstarch as the flour alone wasn’t enough to thicken!! We are going to enjoy it tonight and I bet it will be even BETTER Tomorrow !!! Love the idea of Bacon in my Cream of Broccoli and Cheese soup….I wish I would have cooked some chicken to plop in….maybe in Round Two!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Sounds yummy, but not nearly as healthy. I don’t know if I could feed that to my family on a regular basis.
I made this This week and was very pleased with the result. I didn’t find the need to add extra cheese as I used a sharp/old cheddar. Everyone loved it! Thanks!
The whole family loves this soup! I love the large amount of broccoli and used extra sharp cheddar. Could have been thicker but only had 2% milk on hand. Now if we could only find a whole wheat bread bowl to serve it in. This was our Christmas dinner tonight.
I normally LOVE the recipes from this site, but this one wasn’t my favorite. I felt like the soup could have been thicker and more flavorful. I added nutmeg, and that helped somewhat with the flavor, ano tomorrow night when I serve this for dinner, I’m planning on adding another cup -at least – of cheese. Hopefully, this will help thicken it up a bit. I am so grateful for all the other amazing recipes that Lisa posts, so I’m not too heartbroken that one didn’t work as-is for me. Thanks for all you do!
I love this hearty recipe. Its very simple, and you can play around with the ingredients. Works great in a crock pot too.