For Kelly! This was the best I could do at re-creating my steps...
Okay, so I started with this pre-chopped mirepoix mix (celery, carrots, and onions) from Trader Joe's. I am lazy and have no knife skills to speak of. What can I say?
I did not measure anything, but I used roughly a third of the container. I sauteed this in a pan over medium/high heat with...eh...two tablespoons (?) of butter until the onions were starting to get translucent; then I added in about 5 cloves of chopped (by my husband, due to the aforementioned lack of knife skills) garlic and a bit more butter. Sautee until your entire house smells of awesomeness.
Once everything smelled awesome, added a small amount (maybe 1/4 cup?) of white wine to loosen everything up in the pan. Then I added in a few tablespoons of this business. This stuff is my jam. Turn the heat down on your pan and stir some of this stuff up in there.
...I wound up using most of this jar by the time I was done, but I started out with maybe half of it in the saute pan and added the rest to the crockpot as it cooked over the course of the next several hours. I suppose you could just put it all in there at this stage, but I'd recommend holding out--the beer I used was quite bitter and needed the sweetness of the pepper to chill it out; you might not feel the need for so much of it if your beer is less bitter (or if you like that really bitter flavor).
Anywho, back to the saute pan. I added about half of one of these bad boys in there as well, reduced it to a simmer, and then let it bubble for a maybe 10 minutes or so. You could use chicken broth, too, but I was feeding my soup to some vegetarians.
At this stage, I turned the heat off, let it cool down a little, and transferred everything to a blender. I pureed it until the chunks of celery, carrots, and onions from the mirepoix were but a memory. Then I poured it into my crock pot (high heat) and added this ginormous bottle of face-puckering IPA. This is one of those bottle-and-a-half size beers; you might be fine with a normal sized bottle. I think the bitterness of the IPA is great for the soup, but I also think I maybe had too much beer in mine (see needing the entire jar of red peppers to counteract the bitterness, above).
Stir a pint of heavy cream in there while you're at it. In case you were wondering, this soup is not healthy at all.
There you are, cheese! I bought two of these and only used one. I just noticed that this one says "reduced fat"; that was not on purpose and I don't *think* the one I used was reduced fat, but it may have been. Oh well. This is 0.68 lbs of cheese; I shredded an entire chunk and put that in the crock pot. I also shredded some cheddar/gruyere blend (~the same amount) and added that.
I let this all cook on high, stirring occasionally, for about an hour then turned it down to warm and cooked it for another 7 hours. Periodically I would stir and taste, adding things here and there to adjust the flavor. In addition to the rest of the jar of peppers, I added some of this...
...and also some pepper, salt, and garlic powder. This was all "to taste"; I honestly couldn't tell you how much I put in there.
I thought the cheese would fully melt down, but it didn't--there were still some bits of cheese unmelted in there after several hours of simmering. I could have left well enough alone (I mean, it's not like lumps of melty cheese in your soup are a terrible thing), but instead I put about half the soup in the blender and then added it back in. If you do this, LET THE SOUP IN THE BLENDER COOL. I knew that I was supposed to do that, but I was all "I'll just hold the lid on, no probs." Wrong. Probs. Hot soup everywhere. But it still turned out delicious.
I cooked up some bacon and chopped that up in addition to some green onions as a garnish. I know this is a ridiculously not-precise recipe, but that's how I roll. If you give this soup a go (or some version thereof), let me know how it turns out!
