No Fear Beer Cheese Soup

Lee's a Ram's fan, and I'm a Packers fan.  So obviously, we're cheering for the commercials during this year's Super Bowl.  Still, this time of year, I think it's ok to pull out our favorite football soup of all time, especially when we're going to stay below freezing the entire week!  Beer Cheese Soup, or what I like to call, Wisconsin in a Bowl is just the ticket.  Our original one is delicious, and you can find the recipe here.  

But as our regular readers know, we're trying to clean up Lee's cooking and Margy's eating.  That brought us to our next step in slimming up our Super Bowl!  

Lee whipped up No Fear Beer Cheese Soup. Now, I'm a sucker for a good beer cheese soup and this one was no joke! It's a little thinner than your traditional beer cheese soup, and I thought that was actually a good thing.  In the original soup, the carrots got lost, you kind of wondered if they were there or if Lee used them just to make the ingredient picture look better.  In this soup, they're front and center, giving a delightful burst of flavor.

If you're ready to make it, here's what you need:

3 Carrots (peeled and diced)

1 White Onion (diced)

3 Cloves of Garlic (minced)

1 Shallot (diced)

2 Jalapenos (deseeded, diced)

2 bunches of Green Onions (sliced)

1 Stick of Butter

1 can of Beer (we live in St. Louis, so a Bud product was a must... sorry Milwaukee!) 

1 Tablespoon Dry Mustard

2 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

4 Cups Low Sodium Chicken Stock (We made our own and used no salt)

4 Cups Sharp Cheddar Cheese (shredded)

2 Cups Gruyere Cheese (shredded)

3 Cups Half and Half 

2 Cups Flour

Beer Cheese Soup

We were planning on the Packers being in the Super Bowl when we made our menu, yeah, Lee was THAT excited about cooking on Super Bowl day.  So what is more Wisconsin than beer cheese soup? I mean, that's Wisconsin in a bowl!  
I've long been a beer cheese soup aficionado and the last time we tried it at home, it had the consistency of ball park nacho cheese, not cool.  

 

Kicked Up Chicken and Dumplings

When Lee told me he was making chicken and dumplings, I threw a bit of a fit.  I've never been a big chicken soup fan, and for some reason in my head dumplings are the same thing as biscuits and gravy which I really do hate.  

Luckily, Lee proved me wrong with this amazing version. 

Perfect broth, perfect dumplings, perfect chicken. 

After last week’s beer brined chicken, he’s obsessed so we picked up a whole cut up fryer at the store and he prepared that recipe.  Then he added just a little spice to the dumplings.  By the way, if the dumplings were called really thick noodles, I probably wouldn’t have had any problem at all.