Cookbook Club – Joy of Cooking

This month was the one-year anniversary of our Cookbook Club! We used Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer. I chose the Roasted Garlic Soup. Go to my Cookbook Club site to see all the good eats we had at our birthday celebration. For now – my dish!

I once had a creamy garlic soup at a restaurant, and still have memories of the garlicky deliciousness. So when I spotted the Roasted Garlic Soup in Joy of Cooking, I immediately knew it was my dish.

I love garlic, and typically double the amount of garlic that any recipe calls for. I was pretty excited that his soup uses six whole heads of garlic! First thing I did was trim off the tops, our chicken broth 1/3 of the way up the garlic, top with a drizzle of olive oil, and roast for an hour.

Once roasted, I squeezed the garlic into a pot filled with 48 ounces of chicken broth.

I whisked the garlic into the broth.

Once the soup was at a simmer, I added three slices of bread (crusts removed), salt, pepper, paprika, and lemon juice. The recipe calls for white bread, but I used one slice of rosemary sweet potato bread and two slices of garlic Parmesan bread, because I happened to have those on hand and figured more flavor is better.

I simmered for five minutes, then topped with Parmesan cheese. The soup had the deep, rich garlic flavor I was hoping for. But it wasn’t creamy like the soup I’d had before. There wasn’t any cream in it, so I’m not sure why I expected it to be that way, other than that I was still clinging to the memory of that other soup. I guess I thought the bread would thicken it more. Nevertheless, I believe it was the consistency this garlic soup is supposed to be. It’s also not the prettiest color. While it tasted great, I think I’m still on the hunt for a creamier garlic soup.