Cheddar ale soup

Yes, it's beer cheese soup by any name. I picked this one for lunch because I had the ingredients on hand. When the day's high is never predicted to reach zero and the planes overhead make that lumbering-in-the-cold sound, it's time for something super-warming that coats your inside, and doesn't require putting on coats to go get food.

Cheddar ale soup

From the Williams-Sonoma catalog. It was promoting their stick blender and a gorgeous copper stock pot. My Le Creuset pot may not be quite that fancy, but it certainly did the job. You'll want to rinse your stick blender immediately so the thickened base doesn't stick on.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons (half stick) butter

1 yellow onion, diced

2 celery stalks, diced

2 carrots, peeled and diced

1/3 cup flour

1¾ cup stock

1¾ cup milk

1 12-ounce bottle ale

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1¼ pounds sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Salt and cayenne pepper to taste

Method

Melt butter over medium-low heat in a stockpot. Add onion, celery and carrots. Cook, stirring occasionally, until very soft. Stir in flour and cook a few minutes so it’s not raw-tasting. Increase heat to medium high and whisk in stock and milk. Cook, stirring frequently, until thickened, about 10 minutes.

Puree soup with an immersion blender in the pot, if you have one. Otherwise transfer it to a blender or food processor. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve and return to pot. (Resist the temptation not to strain the soup; it makes a lovely velvety texture, and you can always save the other bits in the freezer for tossing in polenta or to thicken another soup.)

Add beer, Worcestershire sauce and mustard and cook for about 5 minutes. Add cheese in small handfuls at a time, whisking until melted between each addition. Season to taste with salt and cayenne pepper. Serves 3 with reasonable size bowls, or maybe 5 if you're aiming for the cup of soup size.

Rating: Nice texture, and decent flavor depending on how you feel about beer. It mainly tastes like cheese so you'll want to pick a good one, but there’s an underlying hint of the beer behind it, so the type of beer you choose makes a difference. The mellower the ale, the mellower the soup will be. We used a basil hefeweizen that Dave brewed this summer; it had just a bit of a sharp note, which wasn't bad, but might not have been the perfect choice. (Although again, it's an ale that's in the house.) At any rate, I'd make it again. Overall, a good antidote to a cold day. But it's still stupid cold out there.