Broccoli, Ham, Mac and Cheese Soup

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I have quite a bit of cooked turkey in the freezer now as we've had our fill over the last few days. I am sure I have enough for a few recipes, so we'll try and get to them over the next couple of weeks!

So, instead of something turkey related, I made this Broccoli, Ham, Mac and Cheese Soup for our dinner tonight.

For the pasta in the soup, we used medium shells - when they were a minute or two from being ready, I dropped in a few chopped broccoli florets to quickly cook so we'd have one less dish to clean. As that was happening, the base of the cheesy soup started by melting a couple pats of butter. When the butter began to sizzle, an equal amount of flour was sprinkled over the top along with a spoonful of tangy Dijon mustard.

After a minute of chasing the mixture around the saucepan to cook out the flour, we poured in the liquids. I used a combination of chicken broth, half-and-half for richness and a bit of milk. If you have enough half-and-half, feel free to use it for the milk too, but I just used what we had leftover from the Thanksgiving meal. So the flour can do its duty, the liquids were brought to a boil, then the heat was reduce to keep it warm. We then gradually stirred in generous amounts of sharp white cheddar cheese - be sure to do this in stages so the cheese can melt properly. Diced ham is then added, along with the cooked shells and broccoli to bring them back up to temperature.

With just a few shakes of salt and fresh ground specs of black pepper, this swift soup was good to go! While we both liked the sharpness in the cheese, you could use a more mild cheese if you needed to dial that down. Kind of like a "soupy" mac 'n cheese, for lack of a better word, Jeff mentioned he would like this again and maybe use cauliflower to change it up! I also quite liked how using the broth lightened it up, while the duo of half-and-half with milk lent enough richness and mouth-feel to keep us happy.

Recipes
Broccoli, Ham, Mac and Cheese Soup