Creamy Roasted Garlic Soup

We love garlic in our house even more than we love bacon.  Massive quantities of garlic go into just about everything we cook.  I've been meaning to make some more soup recently because we had several containers of vegetable broth in the freezer as well as bags full of frozen veggies to make more stock, so I knew I had to use some up.  Roasted garlic soup is something neither of us had tried, but we've seen it on a few cooking shows and wanted to try it!  Lots of the recipes I saw online were for a completely smooth, creamy soup, but I wanted a little bit of chunky vegetable bite in mine.  Man, this soup came out great... we'll be making this one again soon, no doubt!

If you're not real familiar with the qualities of roasted garlic, I think it's important to explain that as the garlic roasts, it loses it's sharp, pungent taste and becomes much more mild and sweet.  So if you're not as into garlic as we are, don't let the 4+ heads of garlic in this recipe scare you away!  It's really got a pleasant, smooth flavour to it.

Thought I'd go with some F-Minus for this recipe... we'd just finished watching the movie/documentary "Give 'Em the Boot" again the other night, and I was thinking how I don't have many female singers posted on the blog here.  So F-Minus, performing "Light At the End".  -jen






CREAMY ROASTED GARLIC SOUP

Prep Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Cook Time:  45 minutes
Difficulty:  Easy
Serves:  4-6 

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 3/4 cup finely diced onion (or 1 small onion)
• 3/4 cup finely diced red bell pepper (or 1 small pepper)
• 3/4 cup finely diced carrot (about 2 medium carrots)
• 1 and 3/4 cup finely diced Yukon Gold potato (or 1 medium potato)
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 3 tablespoons flour (or 1/4 cup for a thicker soup)
• 1 quart vegetable or chicken broth
• 4 bulbs of roasted garlic (see roasting instructions below, takes an hour to roast)
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon sherry
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 cup heavy cream
• black pepper to taste
• shredded Parmesan cheese and lemon wedges for serving

To Roast Garlic:  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Chop the tops of the garlic heads off.  Peel away the outer skins (leaving the clove skins in tact).  Place on aluminum foil.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper.  Fold foil up around garlic heads and seal.  Place foil packet in oven, directly on rack, and bake for 1 hour.  Remove from oven, carefully open foil, and allow to cool.  To remove garlic from the garlic paper, just squeeze the whole head and the garlic will deliciously ooze out... just be careful not to mix any of the garlic paper in.
** For this soup recipe, I took about 1/2 a cup of the broth and the roasted garlic and blended it until smooth.  I highly suggest doing this.

In a stock pot, heat butter over medium-high heat.  Add diced onion, bell pepper, carrot, potato and minced garlic.  Cook until onion and pepper are tender, 5-7 minutes.  Stir in flour to coat vegetables and cook another 3-5 minutes.  Add stock and roasted garlic all at once and whisk so that the flour doesn't clump.  Add Worcestershire, sherry and thyme.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for 25 minutes.  Stir in cream and let simmer an additional 10 minutes.

To serve, place Parmesan cheese in bottom of bowl, ladle soup over the cheese, and squeeze the juice of 1-2 lemons into soup.