Cream of Onion & Celery Soup with Black Rice

Oooooh happy Friday in about 15 minutes. This week has been LONG! I re-discovered a old favorite grocery store and have been occupied with their sales, buying over 10lbs of produce and making it into salsas, tomato sauce and chile verde. I sat down at 11pm tonight for the first time since I walked into the kitchen to bake cookies at 9am. I’m effin’ exhausted.

Anyway, I wanted to try this out ahead of time, to see if I could make my own “cream of something” soup. Because they over charge you in the store for the teeny cans, it doesn’t look like food, and it’s full of sodium, chemicals and crap. So I wanted my own, customizable cream-of-whatever-the-fuck-I-wanted, soup. Twas a smashing success, if I do say so myself…

A quick low-down on black rice, if you’ve never heard of it… And since I’m tired I’m going to quote straight from Wikipedia: “Black rice is high in nutritional value and contains 18 amino acids, iron, zinc, copper, carotene and several important vitamins.” Pretty bomb little grains. And they’re tasty! I bought this brand below, just because it was the first one I saw, ever. Hopefully it becomes more popular and cheaper. I hate myself for saying that. Ugh, consumerism.

Back to the soup.

INGREDIENTS:

3Tbs butter, I use unsalted
3Tbs all purpose flour, I use unbleached
1Qt milk, I use 1%, I’d normally have used some buttermilk too, but I didn’t have any. I’d say about 1/2 a cup.
1Cup white onion, diced
1Cup celery, chopped
1Clove garlic, minced
Salt, pepper, tips of celery to garnish

DIRECTIONS:

Follow the directions on your package of black rice, cooking it fully before adding it to your soup.

In a medium sauce pan, on medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour and whisk until fully incorporated, and cook until it starts to brown nicely. Slowly add the milk, whisking to incorporate the flour fully after about a cup of milk, then adding the rest slowly. Reduce the heat, after it reaches a boil, and simmer, whisking almost constantly (sorry!) until it reaches your desired soupy-ness.

Add the rice, garnish with the tips of the celery stalks you used!

This soup was delicious, not expensive and I will be making it again VERY soon. I’m working hard to build my soup recipe stash before winter hits… Ooooh, hard winter we get here in the desert. lol