To begin this soup, we must make a vegetable stock, a very simple broth. You can skip making the broth and jump straight to the soup, but a homemade broth is always better than a store-bought one.
1-2 Tbs olive oil
½ Tbs minced garlic
½ of a medium white onion
3 large carrots
2 stalks of celery
3 sprigs of thyme
10 stems of parsley
6 cups of water
2 bay leaves
Begin by peeling and mincing your garlic—this is easiest to do in a garlic press. 4 large cloves should be close to ½ a tablespoon. You can also hand chop them or just buy pre-minced garlic and measure that out. Take one white onion, cut both ends off, and cut it in half. Peel it and chop up the onion. It doesn’t matter much how big the pieces are because it will all get blended up. Mine were very coarsely chopped because I’m a wimp about onion eyes. Throw the onion and garlic into the bottom of a large sauce pot with the olive oil. You don’t need a stock pot unless you are making more than one batch of this recipe. Sauté the onions and garlic on medium heat until the onion starts to become clear and the garlic starts to brown.
While you are waiting on those, peel your carrots and chop them. They don’t stay in the soup, so just cut them down enough to put in the pot. The celery will need the same thing, but make sure you wash that well since it won’t be peeled. Snap off the leafy section and the white bottom. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just small enough to put in the pot like the carrots. Pick out and rinse your parsley and thyme.
Once the onions and garlic are sautéed, add 6 cups of water and all you your herbs and veggies, drop the temperature low and let it do its thing for about 2 hours, maybe a little less than that (use medium-low if you need this a little faster).
10 roma tomatoes
1 bottle of amber ale
1 small sweet potato
½ lb bacon
1 c heavy cream
1 ½ c shredded cheddar
2 Tbs tomato paste
2 tsp salt
½ Tbs water
1 Tbs cornstarch
Once the vegetable stock is done, strain the veggies and herbs out and put it back in the pot. Cut off the little pieces of the tomatoes where the stem connects to, but don’t take off too much. Add the tomatoes to the pot. Set the heat to medium and let it cook until the tomatoes soften.
Peel and chop up the sweet potato. You need this to cook somewhat quickly, so cut pieces that are about the size of a knuckle (roughly an inch) or a little smaller. Add the sweet potatoes and the ale and let that cook until the potatoes have softened and the liquid has gone down a bit. Maybe 30-45 minutes.
While that cooks, fry your bacon so it will be crispy. If this is your first time frying bacon, heat a skillet on medium heat. It is hot enough when you can put a drop of water in it and have it immediately sizzle and begin to evaporate. Cut the bacon slices in half and add as many to the pan at a time as you can. Cook them for about 3 minutes on each side, or until they are brown. You want them to be crispy enough to crumble them easily. When you remove them from the skillet, make sure to set them on a paper towel or something to soak the grease up or they might not crisp up. Once the bacon is cool enough to handle, crumble it.
Once the potatoes are soft, pour it all into a blender and blend on high. It should be smooth. If you can’t get it all in, use a large mixing bowl to hold the blended soup until it’s all done, then put it back into the pot. Add the heavy cream, the tomato paste, and the salt. Now that there’s cream in the soup you will need to keep an eye on it and stir, making sure to scrape the bottom so it doesn’t burn.
If it’s too thin let it cook for a bit longer and get a small bowl to combine the water and cornstarch in. This will create a nonnewtonian fluid and thickener for your soup. I mention that the mixture will be nonnewtonian because you may be tempted to add more water. Nonnewtonian fluids harden when pressure is applied, so when it’s mixed it will always seem like there is hard dry powder at the bottom as you are scraping. If you spoon some up, it should have a slow drizzle to it when you pour it back in the container. Add that to the soup, stirring the whole time.
Finally, switch the heat off and add your shredded cheddar. Feel free to add more than what I did. You can never have too much cheese! Stir the cheese in until it melts. Serve it up and top with the crumbled bacon. You can add chives, sour cream, hot sauce (I like El Yucateco’s Habañero), more cheese, or anything else that strikes your fancy. This soup does very well with some kick to it, but if you don’t like spicy it is fine without the heat as well!