Broccoli-Cheddar Soup for the Student's Soul

On Tuesday the cafeteria served up some broccoli and cheese soup.   Now I know that most students would avoid broccoli as much as former U.S. President H.W. Bush, but not me.  Throw some cheddar into the equation and I am one happy foodie, so it comes as no surprise that I was excited to try the broccoli-cheddar soup on Tuesday.

I heard a rumor that the self-serve soups presented at the cafeteria are frozen concoctions that are shipped in from a supplier.  Personally I don't understand why our school does this when we have a small army of chefs-in-training who should be practicing their skills with making "mother sauces," and soup bases recurrently.  Not to mention that our culinary students need to practice their knife skills (perhaps they could even team up with the music students like this chef).  Nevertheless if a soup is served in the cafeteria at VIU it's only fair to evaluate it.

Cruciferous vegetables are notorious for emitting an unpleasant odor when overcooked, so I was quite happy to note that this soup only bore the pleasant aroma of broccoli and cheddar.  The tiny florets in the soup were cooked to perfection and the pieces of stems in the soup were correctly stripped of their fibrous exterior, leaving only the soft interior (a little too soft for my personal preference, but I would rather have a broccoli stem be too soft than too firm).  I was mostly impressed by the cheese that was in the soup.  I honestly expected it to be made of glow-in-the-dark processed cheese, but the color and flavor of this soup indicated that it only had a small amount of the questionable product in it, if any.  I did not feel the need to add salt, pepper, or condiments of any kind to enhance the flavor.  It was perfect.

Alas, I do have two complaints about the broccoli and cheddar soup:  It is not made by our culinary students, and it is not served frequently enough. Considering that those are my only two complaints, I'd say that this is an excellent chicken broccoli-cheddar soup for the student's soul.