Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Serves enough for 3-4 persons

Presentation

Serve in a mug or a soup bowl; whichever you prefer. You can decorate it with some green like some basil leafs, or perhaps with a slice of French baguette with some goat cheese or melted Gouda cheese.
If you want to freshen it up a bit more, consider drizzling a bit of good extra virgin olive oil on top of the soup.

Take a nice medium to large sized piece of broccoli. The fresher the broccoli, the brighter green the endresult.

Cut off the heads/roses/flowers/tops of the broccoli.

Keep the heads/tops of the broccoli in a colander/sieve.

You probably can just leave them on, but I prefer to cut/slice/trim these unappealing pieces off the stems.

To make it easier to wash and finely cut the stems, I first split them up into smaller pieces like this. You can either wash them now, or after you've finely chopped them.
I usually also scrape the stems a bit to get rid of spots.

To reduce the cooking time and make blending go a lot easier, chop the stems into tiny pieces like this.

I had forgotten to wash the finely chopped stems while they were still bigger pieces, so I ended up doing it like this.

Once the broccoli stems are cleaned and finely chopped, you can put them in a pan with plenty of water. Remember, the heads still need to be added later, so don't be too skimpy on the water.

Put the pan with broccoli stems and water on a stove on high heat and bring it to a boil I've added a vegetable stock cube for a bit of extra flavour, but you could also just stick to some salt and pepper.

Peel and slice some of your favourite onions (I had pink onion, shallot and 'plain' white onions)
I love onions, so I tend to have plenty of different kinds ready for cooking. From the top left in clockwise order: pink onion (though it more looks like a red one), shallot, plain white/yellow onions.
Since I like the flavour of onions added to the soup, I added quite some onions to it. You could of course add less or no onions at all to your soup.

Chop your onions up into smaller pieces. Don't hesitate to put a bit of extra love into it. ;-)

I used some liquid cooking butter for this, but you can also use plain butter or your favourite oil for it. Using butter will help with the browning though.

Once the butter/oil has melted and is kinda sizzling, add your onions. Give it a stir so they are all nicely coated in butter.

Bring the heat down a bit and slowly cook your onions.
Don't forget to stir every now and then so your onions don't get burnt, but do give them enough rest between stirs to get a nice golden/brown colour.
If they start sticking to the pan, feel free to use some of the soup liquid to scrape stuff off the bottom.

Sample the broth and broccoli stems every now and then to see if it needs more seasoning and whether the stems are soft enough to blend.

Add a bit of the soup liquid to it to get the fond off the bottom of the skillet and afterwards add the contents of the skillet to the soup.
I was first planning on adding just half on this amount of onions to the soup and use the rest for something else I was cooking, but ended up using all of it.

Get some tasty bacon and put it in your skillet with a bit of butter and slowly cook/fry them.
I used about 300 grams of smoked bacon bits, but you can add as much as you'd like.

I used an immersion blender so I could blend everything right in the pan, but you can also put everything in a heat-resistent food processor or blender and use that instead.

Make sure not to lift the blender out of the pan while blending though, or else your kitchen will look like a bile zombie has spread its poisonous acid everywhere....like I once did :$

Once you've blended everything, it's ready for the heads to be added. You can sample it to see if it needs a bit more seasoning.

The hot water will help bring out the colour and aroma.

Don't boil them too long, or you'll lose the fresh green colour of the heads and it might end up tasting a bit bitter.

I prefer the bacon bits not to be too crispy, but your tastes may differ. ;-)
Feel free to experiment a bit with it.

Give the broccoli soup another whizz of the blender so the heads are no longer large chunks (unless you like that of course). Personally I don't blend it too long, because I think it's nice to have a bit of texture left.

Add the bacon bits to the soup and put it back on the stove for a bit longer while stirring to get the flavours blending nicely together.

Pour the broccoli soup into a mug or a bowl, which ever you prefer. :) I prefer the mug when I serve it as a healthy afternoon snack.

I've topped it off with a bit of basil for decoration. You could also serve it with a slice of toast or French baguette with some goat cheese or melted Gouda.

Broccoli Soup, Done (Closeup)

I hope you enjoyed following this guide and I would like to hear your ideas or see your endresults of this recipe.

Feel free to also browse through the original photo album on Google Plus (G+) so you can watch the images in their original full-size format, and leave comments on the individual pictures, or the entire album.

Finally, don't forget to check out my other recipes here on RecipEasy.

This recipe was inspired by Gordon Ramsay's Broccoli Soup recipe, which used just the broccoli heads/florettes, water, salt and pepper (served with walnuts and goat cheese). Since I think it's a waste not to use the stalks/stems of the broccoli, and wanted a bit of meat in it, I created my own version. However, I would still recommend watching Ramsay's original creation.

Alternatives

If you like coconut then you could also have a look at this Dutch broccoli-coconut soup with chicken recipe. I have yet to try it, but it looks interesting.