The Recipe with Kenji and Deb - Broccoli Cheddar Soup (and something just as money, with Nigel Poor & Earlonne Woods)

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

You’re really only technically eating a vegetable with broccoli cheddar soup — it is insistently not health food, but a giant middle finger to whoever invented the four food groups. It is a “you sure about that?” to the likes of President George HW Bush, who famously and controversially banned broccoli from Air Force One. Plus, we get to the bottom of broccoli vs broccoli rabe vs broccolini, and a broccoli dish to impress.Recipes Mentioned: Broccoli Cheddar Soup (Serious Eats) Broccoli Cheddar Soup (Smitten Kitchen) Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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There's the black preacher who reached millions on the airwaves before the civil rights movement, the woman who tried to warn the public of Hitler's rising power, and the talk show host who first proved that outrage sells. Sometimes we get people on there who disagreed with him and fight with him. Actually, he liked that. I mean, if you were a Broadway play, you'd be a flop. I'm not a Broadway play. But you're a flop.

Listen to all three episodes of Making Waves on the Radio Diaries podcast available wherever you listen. The New Yorker calls Radio Diaries a venerable and remarkable audio documentary project. Subscribe to Radio Diaries wherever you get yourable and remarkable audio documentary project. Subscribe to Radio Diaries wherever you get your podcasts or visit them at radiodiaries.org. Can I read you the little introduction to the post that I wrote about my recipe on Serious Eats? Please do because it was very funny.

It made me laugh. All right. It says, in the world of cheaty foods, broccoli cheese soup has always seemed like one of the cheatiest. Yes, broccoli is the first word in the name, and soup sure sounds healthy, but let's get real. When you go up to the counter and tell the order taker, I'd like a bowl of broccoli cheese soup please, what you're really saying is, thank you for making it easy and acceptable to drink a bowl of nacho cheese sauce for lunch.

From PRX's Radiotopia, this is the recipe with Kenji and Deb, where we help you discover your own perfect recipes. Kenji is the author of The Food Lab and The Walk and a columnist for The New York Times. And Deb is the creator of Smitten Kitchen. She's also the author of three best-selling cookbooks. We've been professional recipe developers for nearly two decades and we've got the same basic goal, to make recipes that work for you and to make you excited to get into the kitchen. But we've got really different approaches and on this show we'll cook and talk about each other's recipes,

comparing notes to see what we can learn from each other. This week we're talking about broccoli cheddar soup. That's next on The Recipe, so stick around. Deb, so you said you don't have many opinions on broccoli cheese soup. Did you have broccoli cheese soup growing up? What was your earliest experience with broccoli cheese soup? We absolutely did not grow up on it. Cheese soup is not something we have ever conceptualized outside like, I don't know, onion soup, which was definitely something we did have,

but that's like the cheese on top. So I just, I always thought it was kind of a Midwestern thing, but then I learned that there's a lot of countries and cultures that have their own versions of cheese soup, from Spain to Switzerland to, to that. Yeah, so I absolutely did not grow up on it. Like I did not have, did you have it growing up?

No, not at all. In fact, the first time I think I ever had broccoli, broccoli cheese soup was when I developed this recipe. And you know, cause I developed the recipe because I, people were asking me, hey, do you have a broccoli cheese soup recipe on Serious Eats? And I was like,

I've never had broccoli cheese soup in my life. And so what I did was I looked up on the internet where most people's experiences for broccoli cheese soup come from. And I think it's two places. It's either the Campbell's canned broccoli cheese soup or it's lunch at Panera. Panera is the big one. Apparently the Campbell's canned broccoli cheese soup came out in the 90s and I think

that's around the time Panera probably blew up, maybe late 90s. I'm not sure of these, but it was like, there was like the biggest thing on their menu was this broccoli cheese soup. I guess they're still around, so maybe it still is. Maybe I should have gone out there for research, found a Panera. Probably by the time I made this broccoli cheddar soup, I'd probably only had it like three or four times,

just because people had mentioned it. Maybe I tried it at a cafe. And then I think I mentioned that I was having a really weird craving for it when I was pregnant with my daughter. When I was pregnant with my son, I was craving broccoli and green vegetables all the time, but with my daughter somehow cheese was added. Like it was very specific. Broccoli cheese soup, it's super popular at Panera. And it was also, I think, Campbell's best selling soup in like decades or something like that. They had a get President George Bush eat broccoli campaign.

This is George H.W. Bush who said that now that he's president of the United States, he no longer has to eat broccoli because he's hated it since he was a kid. It was actually hilarious. I mean, it was really like a very funny, like it was such a, such the kind of thing you think you would say if you became president. Oh yeah. You know, I had to eat it as a kid and I'm the president of the United States and I'm not gonna eat broccoli anymore.

I hope we're giving a reference that anyone has heard of, but it was like 89, 88. Back then, like those were the kinds of things that were coming out of the White House. Yeah, those were different times. Long for those days. Do you remember the mock protest where California broccoli farmers sent a truckload of broccoli to the White House?

They were going to dump it there. And I think that Bush had lamented that it might have cost him the broccoli vote. His comments. You've got the president disparaging your crop. You can't have this. Did you eat broccoli growing up? If you were to become the president the United States would you? Say something really bratty to the press about broccoli No, I loved broccoli growing up

I still love broccoli my kids actually really love broccoli to my mom would blanch it or steam it and then chill it and then We would eat it dipped into QP mayonnaise Which is a real Japanese thing to do but that's what we that sounds really good broccoli and asparagus cold dipped into QP mayonnaise, which I think is a real Japanese thing to do, but that's what we did. That sounds really good. Broccoli and asparagus, cold dipped into QP. I feel like most broccoli cheddar soup recipes have a pretty standard batch of ingredients. You've got the broccoli, you've got the cheese, you should have some milk or cream, maybe some butter, onion and- Generally some flour to help.

Garlic, usually to make a roux to like thicken it. And to make sure that the cheese kind of blends in smoothly and doesn't break out. Usually chicken or vegetable broth. And then, I don't know, onion, garlic. And for some reason, there's always carrots in there. And I don't think they're doing a whole lot besides adding color and maybe a little bit of sweetness, but it feels important to have that there. What my recipe ends up being,

it's like real cheese forward with bits of broccoli in there. Whereas your recipe is the other way around. Your recipe is really broccoli forward. I mean, your soup is green, and I think that was part of your goal, right? Your soup is real green. It looks like a healthy soup. It tastes delicious, but it also tastes healthy.

In fact, it's probably less healthy than it tastes. There's still quite a bit of butter and cream and cheese in there, but no, but it also tastes healthy. In fact, it's probably less healthy than it tastes. There's still quite a bit of butter and cream and cheese in there, but no, but it tastes great and it's real broccoli forward. It doesn't have one and a quarter pounds of cheese in it, though, and that makes it less exciting. Well, it didn't when you put the recipe up, but it did when I made it.

I put in the recommended eight ounces of sharp cheddar cheese in your recipe, and then I put in the remainder of the pound of sharp cheddar cheese in your recipe, and then I put in the remainder of the pound of sharp cheddar cheese that I had. I think it always comes down to personal preferences, but I think this was definitely one where I was looking and I'm like, Kenji's is like a big puddle of cheese sauce, and my kids are going to absolutely, they're going to go berserk for it, they're going to completely love it. And I was coming from more of a place of like,

I don't know why I'm supposed to eat a big cup of cheese sauce, can I find a balance where I felt like I equally tasted both things? And so that's where I was coming from. You got there. I got there. You got there. And I'm glad you said it too,

because I really did find that it is a very quick soup too. Honestly, it's the chopping of the broccoli that probably takes almost as much time as making the soup, depending on fast you are. I mean, it's a lot to cut eight cups of broccoli. It is, yeah. One and a quarter pounds pounds of broccoli I think your recipe calls for. But the thing is like with your soup it's mostly pureed like you can puree it down as much as you want and so you can be real rough about the chop. I didn't very carefully separate little

florets I just kind of roughly chopped everything and then blended it until it looked okay at the end you know. Pulsed it with a hand, that's what I did. I pulsed it. My family doesn't like pureed soups. I think they're wrong. So I tend to just, I keep it pretty chunky. And then I might blitz it for like one or two seconds just to get a little bit more background thickness and body, but it's really, it really looks a lot

like when I make it like the really more like the photo on my site where you can see the chunks in it. You can see chunks. Yeah, mine had some chunks left over in it. When I was working on this recipe, I tested a whole bunch of recipes before I started working on mine. And the process is generally, yeah,

you sweat out some onions and carrots, and then you add some flour, then you add your liquids, and then you simmer the broccoli, and then you blend it all, and you blend in some cheese, which is pretty close to how you do yours. Your recipe, you're mainly sort of playing around with the ratio of ingredients and sort of the real nitty gritty specifics of the process

in order to find that real good balance between broccoli and cheddar. I wanted mine to really taste like a broccoli soup with cheese in it rather than a cheese soup with broccoli in it. But that was, I had done the same thing you had because I also hadn't grown up on it and I didn't have a go-to recipe.

So when I started having cravings for it, I just picked a few popular ones on the internet which were mostly Panera copycats. And I was like, my word, there's three cups of cream in here and two pounds of cheese. And I'm not saying we, none of it went to waste, but not just this isn't a calorie thing.

I just, feel like when something is that heavy and rich, you know, fat, you could probably explain this from a food science perspective, but fatty, thick, rich things kind of block flavor. And so you just couldn't taste anything, not the onion and not the broccoli. It includes it, it wraps it in cellophane or butter fat. And you can't taste the vegetables. And I felt like that was kind of a bummer if you actually wanted a little bit of a broccoli taste in there, or a lot. Yeah, I mean, cream and butter do tend to just sort of dull flavors.

They'll make sharper flavors kind of rounder and sort of bitter. They really smooth out all the edges of everything. And so something like broccoli, which does have like a pretty distinct aroma and a pretty sort of, you know, it has like a little bit of bitterness to it. Like that you do end up losing a lot of sort of what the characteristics that make broccoli when you add that much cream and butter to it, which is maybe part of the point, you know, it's like, how do we get kids? How do we get George W Bush, HW Bush to eat more broccoli? It's like you just make it taste less like broccoli and more like cheese and more like cheese. A wildly

popular concept, you know, in the nineties and apparently like cheese a wildly popular concept you know in the 90s and apparently since now so I gave you the standard ingredient list but your recipe on serious eats has some other interesting I was actually expecting you to use evaporated milk here and I think you mentioned it in your head notes but let's talk about the ingredients that you have that are kind of like non-standard I'm thinking of there's potato in it and you don't use cream, you use milk. Yeah. So the potato is actually like the end of a long sort of process, you know,

because if you try and just melt cheese directly in stock or you melt cheese directly in milk, American cheese will work because it's got emulsifying salts in it, you know, things that'll help make sure that the proteins don't like kind of squeeze up too tightly and you don't end up with like a stringy block of cheese that just like sinks to the bottom and like fat that flows to the top, which is what happens if you try and just melt. Yeah, you get a fat, a fatberg. Yep. So, you know, American cheese has these emulsifying salts that help it. But if you're going to do something like a sharp cheddar and you just try and melt it in milk, it doesn't really

work very well. So that's why you need a thickener, you know, something like flour. When you make a roux, those starch granules in the flour, they swell up, they thicken it up. The protein molecules in the cheese are trying to find each other and trying to like, you know, like hold hands and pull each other real tight. When you make a thicker sauce, it physically impedes them from doing that so that they don't really tighten up as much because there's all these swollen up starch granules in the way.

I tested like, you know, a standard roux and then I tested also adding evaporated milk. Evaporated milk can help with these kinds of like emulsifying because they contain more protein Micelles, which are sort of bundles of proteins that have their ends poking out so that they repel each other instead of attracting each other. But what I found actually worked best in the end was, if you just throw a potato in there. Have you ever tried making mashed potatoes by boiling the potatoes and then sticking them in a food processor? You get glue because potatoes are actually like what,

90 percent water, they're all water. They're water and a bunch of starch that bursts out Like so so it's all just like little water bubbles is what I think of it Very scientifically, that's the scientific term for little water bubbles. Yeah, well, there's water there's a lot and there's a lot of starch and that's starch like when you Blend the potato it destroys all the cells and all these little starch molecules jump out and they turn into like a glue. Excuse me, a potato is 80% water. I stand corrected. Sorry, interrupt. And so in mashed potatoes, like you don't want that, but in something like a cheese sauce,

I actually have a recipe for a vegan cheese sauce that uses a potato also to thicken it because it gives you that sort of gooey, cheesy texture without actually, well, in the cheese sauce case, it was without having to actually add cheese. In the case of the soup, it gives it that sort of gooey cheesy texture without actually, well in the cheese sauce case it was without having to actually add cheese. In the case of the soup, it gives it that sort of creamier, gooier flavor, gooier texture, but I found it doesn't dull flavor the same way that flour or cornstarch or something like that can. So it's just like another vegetable element you're adding in there that when you then subsequently blend it, it turns the soup kind of thicker and it helps the cheese emulsify. It's cool though.

It's nice because it's something you keep around. I don't always keep evaporated milk around. I don't keep all the starches around that might work better. But so a potato is such a great ingredient because who doesn't have a potato? Who can't get a potato? You use, so you use a russet potato

and you also add some American, you don't just use cheddar cheese. You use 12 ounces of cheddar cheese and then use half a pound of deli style American cheese. And I was so glad you said the word deli style cause I was about to buy a package of like the individually wrapped ones and I would have lost my mind and I was very grateful.

Yeah, or you can just add, go to the deli counter and ask for just a big chunk of it. Generally the stuff that you buy at the deli counter has better flavor than what's gonna come in the in the packs Wait, but do you when you buy American cheese? Do you still buy the individually sliced? I'm like nodding my hand head in shame, but I I like had not eaten it I buy Kraft deli deluxe these days because of the plastic waste. I don't like the plastic Listen, we don't go through that much of it and it was definitely something I probably hadn't had since I was a kid until I met my husband. But he feels that we've probably talked about this in the egg sandwich recipe episode.

But he feels strongly that you need a properly melting cheese for an egg sandwich and an omelet. So he doesn't want. So that's when we started buying it. But you know, you can buy a package and it's good forever. So use American cheese. I do. The unwrapped kind. The unwrapped kind. The unwrapped kind for slightly better flavor. But I've also made this, I've made this with like, you know, pre-sliced Kraft Deli Deluxe,

which is, you know, not like fancy deli cheese. It doesn't have the flavor of like a Lando Lakes or a Boar's Head does, but it works fine. You know, the American cheese is mainly in there to also just help with the smoothness. Your soup is real vegetable forward, and it has like a kind of chunky broccoli texture, whereas my soup just kind of tastes like nacho cheese sauce with chunks of broccoli floating around in it. No, it tastes a little bit different than that, but I was really going for that like I want to make this like if it's going to be cheese soup it's going to be real cheesy.

And so the American cheese is mainly there to help give it more of that texture and really help it kind of melt and emulsify. So your soup though, you know, one of the problems I found with the recipes I tested, so there are a lot of broccoli cheese soups that are slow cooker recipes. Interesting. And I also found, so when I went to Panera as part of the research, at Panera, I'm pretty sure they just keep it in, you know, like one of those soup, hot, you know, those hot soup thingies. Which are basically like slow cookers. Yeah, like a bain-marie, you know, that keeps the soup at like whatever, 165 degrees. And so it ends up with a kind of real dull broccoli flavor, I think just because the broccoli gets overcooked. Keeps cooking. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so it has like a kind of drab color and the broccoli is not very bright tasting. Whereas your soup, you only simmer the broccoli just until it's tender, so it's about 15

minutes. And then you blend it. It's still real bright green. You serve it immediately or you can, you know, I chilled it and I gave it to my kids for in their lunch today. But it ends up a real bright green because you're not cooking the crap out of it. In your recipe, we start by roasting the broccoli and you wanted to do that.

You roasted in the stock pot, right? Well, it's not roasted, but it gets, yeah, you cook it until it caramelized, like until it browns really deeply. So actually what I do is I divide the broccoli in half. So I have the stems separate from the florets. When I take the florets, I cut them up real small. And then I put them into a stock pot or Dutch oven and let them brown, just let

them sit there browning in oil until they're like really deeply browned on one side. I was thinking, all right, if I'm not gonna go for that that simmered broccoli flavor, I'm really gonna try and emphasize the other flavor broccoli, which I love, which is like a really deeply caramelized broccoli, you know, where it gets a little bit sweet and nutty. Oh yeah, like when you roast it till it's almost black and crispy, it's a charred broccoli. Exactly. In fact, this recipe would probably work just fine if you roast a broccoli instead of browning

it in the Dutch oven. I've never tried it, but. Yeah, but it allows you to not have to switch to the oven and stuff like that. That's right. You brown the florets in the Dutch oven and then you dump them out and then you put your other sort of base ingredients. So I do sliced onion, carrot, and then the broccoli stems out and then you put your other sort of base ingredients. So I do sliced onion, carrot, and then the broccoli stems and I saute those all without browning them, you know,

just until they're kind of soft. And that becomes sort of the flavor base for the soup, which all gets blended. You know, once you add the milk and the potato and you simmer it all, then that all gets blended together with the cheese until it's real smooth. And then you sort of stir in the charred broccoli again at the very end. So you're getting like a couple layers of broccoli flavor. You're getting the base broccoli flavor from the stems is in the background of the soup. And then you get this kind of sweet nuttier broccoli from the broccoli that well, first of all, from the florets that are in there and then also from deglazing the pan after

roasting the florets in there. I mean, I love roasted broccoli. So it sounds amazing to me. I was thinking when I was revisiting my recipe because it's a few years old, I was thinking, you know, I think we discussed, I don't know if it was the chicken soup recipe episode or a different one, but I was saying how much I dislike

the boiled vegetable flavor in soups, and so I always saute them in a little bit of fat to kind of get it a little sweetened up, and we didn't fully agree on it. You weren't, I wanted, I think that you should sweat your vegetables. And yet on the broccoli cheddar soup, I jump it in right for a simmer. And I think I just wanted it to be that clean taste, maybe just cause we don't cook it that long.

When I make the broccoli cheddar soup, it doesn't get that gassy funk, that, that boiled vegetable death. Maybe cause it's a singular vegetable, except for like a little bit of minced carrot. It doesn't get that kind of stodgy taste. That flavor actually comes more from boiled onions like boiled alliums. Maybe. Which in your recipe you do saute the onions first. Saute the onions, yeah.

Yeah. And then you only add the carrots and broccoli at the end. Yeah, I do find if you're making chicken soup, it's a real conscious choice whether you wanna sweat your onions first or whether you wanna add them raw. And you do sweat your onions. I sweat the onions, but I don't sweat the broccoli. I just wanted it to be very clean. I wanted it to be simmered in this buttery,

lightly creamy, cheesy broth, and for it to really be like a beautiful piece of broccoli. Which as somebody who didn't grow up with heavy, goopy broccoli cheddar soup, I assume that's what everybody wanted from it. So, I don't know. So you use the potato, you use cheddar, cheese,

and you use, you do, you brown it, you don't roast it, but you basically almost roast it in the pan, the broccoli to begin. The other thing is that a lot of, especially the copycat recipes for the, you know, the chains, they use a lot of cream and you actually just use milk in yours. I think I use half and half which is not exactly half. You use, yeah, you use a cup of half and four cups of chicken stock. Exactly, but of course you could play with those. I think I do two cups of water and three cups of milk.

Three cups of chicken stock and three cups of milk. Yeah. So you found that milk was all you needed to get the creaminess you wanted or maybe because you were getting it from the potato and all that cheese you didn't feel like you needed the richness of the cream too. You couldn't mess around with it as much as you want. You know, it's like it doesn't, it's not going to hurt it if you add, if you really want it to be creamier, you can add more cream. But yeah, I did really want that sort of real bright cheese and broccoli flavor to come out. And yeah, like I said, like cheese, cream is always going to make anything you have sort of taste rounder and smoother. Cream is like the beer goggles of food, you know? But it's also a blocker too. Like I said, if there's too much cream in a soup, I feel like you can't taste all the layering work you did to get a nice vegetable base in there. I've got mustard powder and hot sauce in mine also.

That's right. I bought a new tin of mustard powder for you because mine was ancient. What I find works best is actually if you grate the cheese and then you toss it with a little bit of mustard powder so that it spreads out and doesn't clump up, it incorporates real easily. But you know, I find that it doesn't taste mustardy, but it brings a little bit more sharpness and it kind of acts. So if you have like a sharp cheddar cheese.

It's just going to accentuate the sharpness a little bit. I agree with you. Dried mustard and hot sauce are like the two ingredients I very commonly will add to. By hot sauce, I mean something like a Frank's Red Hot, you know, so it's like a vinegary hot sauce that's not especially spicy. Yeah, it's got the very clean taste. It doesn't taste like cumin or roasted chilies or anything like that. It's really just. And it's not particularly hot. taste. It doesn't taste like cumin or roasted chilies or anything like that. It's really just...

And it's not particularly hot. It just kind of brightens things. Somebody's gonna ask if they can use prepared mustard, but it's not the same. It really has a different flavor profile. Cause while most prepared mustards are either gonna be real mild. So if you're buying something like a Dijon mustard,

that's gonna be made with like vinegar or wine and acidity actually really tames mustard flavor. So if you take dried mustard powder and you mix it, you reconstitute it into like a mustard sauce, you know, prepared mustard. If you mix it with just water, it ends up significantly hotter, like spicier tasting than if you mix it with water and vinegar or water and wine. But now I'm going to put it in my mac and cheese and anything else with cheddar. So I know how to use the rest of my, you know, like two tablespoons in.

We will have more of the recipe where we're talking about broccoli cheddar soup and things that are tangentially related to it in just a moment. So today we've got a question from our fellow Radiotopia hosts Nigel Poore and Erlon Woods from Ear Hustle. If you've never listened to Ear Hustle, you definitely should be, and you're in for such a treat. Nigel and Erlon co-created the show while Erlan was incarcerated

at San Quentin State Prison, where Nigel was a volunteer teaching photography. Happy to share that Erlan has since been out for several years, but they still work with inside teams at San Quentin and also now at the California Institute for Women. They show us what life is like inside prison and on the outside post incarceration. I know it sounds like it would be dark or depressing, but it's anything but. I agree. And I think the show is really fascinating. A lot of the same things that we deal with on the outside, like romantic trouble, roommate troubles, parenting troubles, folks on the inside are also dealing with, but with a layer of complication from being incarcerated. Like, how do you parent where the only contact you have are 15 minute phone calls with your child?

Everyone please go check it out. But first, let's see what Nigel and Erlan want to ask us. I'm Nigel Pore. And I'm Erlan Woods and we are the co-hosts of the Ear Hustle podcast. And Erlan, what does broccoli mean? Money. Money is good for you. It's green.

It's green. Green bags. But I wonder how good the green broccoli that you eat is for you. I like broccoli. You do? Yeah, I just don't like that broccoli that you like. Oh yeah, so that's my question. Broccoli, broccolini, broccoli rabe, are they interchangeable? Every time I see a recipe I wonder can I use broccoli rabe because that's my favorite. So yeah, I want to know that. Are those three things interchangeable. What's your question? My question is as being a in, you know, I'm part of the diabetic gang I'm trying to figure out how to make a nice broccoli

Like only the only way I know how to make it is steam some up and put a little seasoning on it That's it kind of boring. Yeah, that's boring. So what do I take to a party? What do I cook for somebody? Broccoli. Yeah. How can Erlan impress someone with his broccoli skills? And which broccoli should I use? Two good questions. Not the broccolini though. But that's your favorite though. I don't like the little stalk on it. Well, broccoli rabe is bitter. It's a lot more leafy. I love it, but I don't know how well it would work as a swap in most broccoli recipes.

How do you feel? Broccolini, I think, is the easier swap. Yeah, broccolini and broccoli are very similar. They're the same plant, but a different shape. And I think they are literally the same plant, just a different stage in life. And so, you know, broccolini tends to have the smaller little flowers and florets that are kind of more plant-like and not so tight yet. And in most recipes, you can interchange them, although broccoli, you know, full-grown broccoli tends to have a firmer texture. Whereas broccolini, I think, you know, I think of broccolini more almost

as like, like broccoli flavored asparagus, you know, like it's got that more of that sort of like slightly limper texture and it's longer and skinnier as opposed to chunkier like a regular broccoli does. But that said, you can exchange it in most recipes. The places where you wouldn't be able to exchange broccolini for broccoli are recipes where you're really sort of heavily caramelizing the, or heavily roasting the broccoli and you need it to have a bit of structure. Otherwise, you know, like broccolini, I think does better on a grill or sauteed or stir-fried as opposed to like roasted in the oven where you need a little bit more structure and a little bit more time in there.

Broccoli Rob is a different plant or broccoli Robert, if you don't know it too well, is a different plant entirely. Not entirely, same family, but it has a very different flavor. It's yeah, it's real bitter and it has a sort of much, much more sharpness to it. So broccoli rabe recipes, you tend to want to cook the broccoli longer. And so oftentimes a broccoli rabe recipe will start with blanching it in the big pot of water in order to kind of pull out some of that bitterness before you then saute it. And it's not that common that broccoli rabe, you'll have it sort of bright green and

al dente. More often you're going to be cooking it down until it gets a little bit milder. But I was in California at the bakery that I'm a partner at, Bokhouse, and they have a cafe in Burlingame where we just put a broccoli rabe and provolone grilled cheese on the menu.

So I was testing out a whole bunch of broccoli rabe techniques, but broccoli rabe, the most, I'd say the most well-known, at least American bunch of broccoli rabe techniques. But broccoli rabe, I'd say the most well-known, at least American version of broccoli rabe would be in a Philadelphia roast pork sandwich, where you have roast pork, and then you have broccoli rabe that's been blanched, and then cooked down usually with garlic and chili flakes

until it's really tender, and it becomes this kind of juicy sandwich ingredient. And I think, well, I don't know, that was the idea I had when I put it into this grilled cheese also, that it's gonna have this sort of like juicy vegetalness, a little bit of bitterness, a little bit of sharpness. It goes real well with provolone cheese.

I'm with Nigel that broccoli rabe is one of my favorite forms of broccoli. It does take more work than regular broccoli does though. Not a lot though. I think I have a panini in my first book with a broccoli rabe and different kinds of cheese. And I agree with you, it's really good in a sandwich. And in my last book, my husband in particular loves broccoli rabe, so I make it a lot, where I

do a really quick saute of it. I actually don't blanch it first, but I add a little bit of, I tend to cook it in the pan with the garlic, pepper flakes, the standard ingredients. I love it with lemon zest too. And then what I do is I add a couple, almost like when you're, like you know when you add little water at the end when you're doing pot stickers? I add a couple tablespoons of water,

put the lid on, let it steam for just two or three minutes. I kind of steam that off. And I feel like that softens a little bit of the bitterness and gives you a really nice texture without having to do the whole blanch thing, which I think eliminates too much of the broccoli rub flavor. But I could do a whole episode on broccoli rub. That's how strongly I feel about it.

But to answer the other question, it was Erlan's question was about how else he can make broccoli. And I feel like if you have not made a crispy, almost caramelized roasted broccoli before, I find it to be just life-changing. You cook it at a really high heat. I usually do it at 425 or even 450.

I usually use a bit of olive oil, just a few tablespoons, so it could still stay with like a diabetic diet. I use salt, red pepper flakes. I like to add lemon zest into the mixture and then a couple cloves of garlic. You could probably use five or six. I just use a couple. And you roast it at really high heat.

All the florets get really crispy. And the whole thing- Like frizzled. Yeah, they're frizzled, they're crunchy, they're dark. Like we fight for those corner pieces. Like it's all corner pieces. And then the very end, right before we eat it, but don't wait once you've done this,

I squeezed some of that lemon juice from the lemon I've zested over it and we could just wolf down an entire pan of it. It is crispy and delicious. And that's the flavor I know you were trying to get a little bit a layer of in your soup, but I just feel like a pan of that is just one of my favorite things to eat.

And the trick is you wanna cook it until you think it's overcooked. Like you wanna go longer than you think you should. Like if it looks brown but there's still bright green spots remaining, like you just got to keep going. Like you want it to be real dark and brown and like have some bits that look almost like dried out.

At least that's how I like it where yeah, it really tastes like crispy. Like there's bits that are like, you know, almost like dehydrated because of how much moisture they've lost. And the other thing I was going to say is just from a meal prep perspective, I tend to always end up making too little

because I'll fill the pan with like a normal amount of space and forget how much it's gonna shrink up. And then we end up with like only like a couple cups and we go through it. So you can actually crowd the pan a bit. Usually we're against that because we say it's gonna seem instead of roast, but it's gonna shrink up so much

that it will still get brown and crisp and you'll be happy because you have a fuller amount to eat at the end. You will easily go through a tree or two of broccoli if you cook it this way. A tree or two. Never. A tree or two? Is that what you call it? You measure broccoli by the tree? Well, I mean, some of them are more stem heavy and some of them are like big ground globes, like almost more like cauliflower with a little bit of stems, so it depends on what kind you're getting. Got it. almost more like cauliflower with a little bit of stems. So it depends on what kind you're getting. You could talk by a lot of broccoli.

But he was talking about bringing it somewhere and I'm like, no, you're never gonna leave your apartment because you're just gonna like stay there and eat this entire pan standing up, because it's so good. Yeah. Would you say you might eat two or three of them? Yes.

Why not? In the family tree of like broccoli cheddar soup and broccoli casseroles, like are those sort of almost the same dish for you? You know, like a broccoli and cheese casserole. I haven't done a classic broccoli cheese casserole. I've had broccoli cheese, broccoli cheddar and wild rice casserole on my site, which I absolutely love.

It's more of a Thanksgiving side or a winter side. But I do think of broccoli and cheddar as being very married. Like I have broccoli cheddar fritters. Would broccoli be one of your top choices for like a mac and cheese addition? I would, although I will get my family to eat more broccoli if I keep it out of the mac and cheese. Like you would put a couple florets in.

You're a non-mixing family. I can get them to eat a whole bowl of broccoli versus like the three florets I would put in and probably infuriate them. What about on a baked potato like cheese sauce and broccoli? Do you do broccoli on your baked potato? Yes I would definitely do it. I love a loaded, very loaded baked potato. I think there's something about the way the florets and broccoli pick up the cheese that makes them go real well

together and the flavors also but I think it's for me it's like a lot of it is just the way the cheese coats the flavors also. But I think it's for me, it's like a lot of it is just the way that she's coats the broccoli nicely. Kenji, can you waffle broccoli cheddar soup? No, but, um, I, you know, sometimes I make savory waffles and I have made broccoli, I have put broccoli and cheddar cheese in waffles in the past and that comes out actually pretty well. The broccoli does get a little bit of those like little crispy brown edges and cheese I find gets really nice when you stick it in a waffle. Broccoli, cheddar and chorizo, like little bits of diced chorizo in a waffle is real

good. But I don't think you could take, maybe you could take just the regular broccoli cheese soup and add like flour and eggs to it and waffle it. You probably could. I feel like you could. At first I was cringing because I was imagining pouring a ladle of soup and I was horrified and squicked out at the same time.

But then I'm like, I actually think a savory broccoli cheddar waffle could be really good. I would wanna keep the broccoli pieces pretty small. Like I don't want like pulling apart, you know, like a chunk of broccoli to fall out on my plate, but like, you know, keep it pretty minced. But you know what? I got leftover broccoli cheese soup

and a waffle iron at home, so I will give it a shot. Kenchi, can you taco a broccoli cheddar soup? Again, I don't think so, but when we were talking about how well broccoli and cheddar go together, I think a char on my website, I have a cauliflower and cheese quesadilla with like very, like little bits of cauliflower that you've really almost caramelized in the pan. Really charred. And with poblanos and it's, it's excellent.

I think broccoli would work there too. Yeah. I think we should make a brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos.

Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. I'm really charred and with poblanos and it's excellent. I think broccoli would work there too. Yeah. I think we should make a brocco tacos. Brocco tacos. Kids are going to be so excited.

It sounds like something you would want to punish, like a punishment food for kids, but our kids both love broccoli. So I could push it into- Oh yeah. My kids would love brocco tacos. I feel like I could push it enough and they would stop liking it, but so far we're doing good on it. All right, Kenji, how does broccoli cheddar soup leftover?

Cause I feel like it can be a tricky one to reheat. I find it leftovers fine as long as you chill it fast enough. If you let it like sit hot in a pot on the pan and the broccoli kind of gets drab, then no. But if you pour it into smaller containers so that it cools faster and then you get it in the fridge, I find it reheats fine.

I mean, I heated it up, I heated some up this morning. It tasted fine to me. It does lose a little bit of its sort of you know fresh bright green flavors especially with your recipe because yours is like such a real you know green recipe. But that said like you know there's probably millions of people a day who eat reheated broccoli and cheddar soup at Panera and are just fine with it. Just fine. I wonder Just fine with it. I wonder if they treat it in any way to keep it from getting that kind of soggy brown broccoli situation.

I'll have to find out. I'm gonna go in the field research and report back. Could you cook broccoli cheddar soup in a pan with butter? I would know. I mean, I think maybe in a similar to a waffle situation if you added like some flour and eggs to it and made like broccoli cheese pancakes cooked in putters, sure. Broccoli cheddar omelet would be really good or frittata.

And can you get broccoli cheddar soup out of kids clothes or will you find out tonight when they come home with their empty thermoses because they love it so much? We'll find out. I mean, they went to school with broccoli cheddar soup and sweaters. Oh, God. It's going to be deeply woven, deeply woven. I imagine it'll come out just fine. Cheese tends to come out okay from clothes, I think, and broccoli comes out fine from

clothes. Well, we did get through the whole episode without anybody making any fart jokes, I guess. Any fart jokes? Do you feel on the internet when you post anything about broccoli that people always want to tell you things about what it does to their body that you did not ask? Yeah, broccoli does do things to my insides a little bit. Yeah, so I expect there's gonna be

some commentary on that. That's it for today's episode. We wanna hear from you. Is there another recipe or food you want us to chat about? Any comments or questions about broccoli cheddar soup? Tell us at the recipepodcast.com or at Kenji and Deb on Instagram. I specifically want to know what people do with broccoli and cheddar. Like what are some non-baked potato, non-casserole, non-broccoli cheddar soup situations

where you do broccoli and cheddar together? Bracca tacos. The recipe is created and co-hosted by Deb Perlman and Kenji Lopez-Alt. Our producers are Jocelyn Gonzalez, Perry Gregory, and Pedro Rafael Rosado of PRX Productions. Yuri Losorto is the managing producer. Emmanuel Johnson is the audience engagement manager.

And the executive producer for Radiotopia is Audrey Martavich. Thanks for listening. The recipe with Kenji and Deb is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm.