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Peanut Soup
2 cups milk 1 small minced onion 1/2 teaspoon celery salt 2 tablespoons flour 1/2 cup peanut butter 1/2 teaspoon Chinese sauce or Worcestershire sauce 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons melted butter Make thin white sauce by melting butter, stirring in flour, then adding milk slowly. Next add onion and celery salt and seasonings. Add peanut butter last, stirring it up well. Reheat and put through sieve before serving. Takes only 8 minutes to make this soup.
A quick creamed soup built on a thin white sauce, thickened as much by the peanut butter as by the flour. The order given matters: peanut butter goes in off the boil and last.
- Peanut butter last, and gentlyThe recipe adds the peanut butter last and then reheats. Keep the reheating gentle rather than at a hard boil; boiled hard, the oil can separate and the soup turns grainy and slick.
- Peanut butter has changedOlder peanut butter was often plain ground nuts, oily and unsweetened. Use natural peanut butter with no added sugar; many modern shelf-stable brands are sweeter and will push the soup toward dessert. Stir the jar well before measuring.
- "Chinese sauce"Most likely bottled soy sauce, though the term is vague. Half a teaspoon of soy or Worcestershire is a background note, not a flavor you should identify.
- Thin white sauce proportionsTwo tablespoons each butter and flour to two cups milk is the classic thin ratio. Cook the flour in the butter a full minute before the milk goes in or the soup tastes pasty.
- The sievePressing through a sieve is there to catch the raw onion and any peanut lumps. A stick blender does the same job in a few seconds, though a sieve afterward still gives a smoother result.
- Cook the onionThe onion is added raw to hot sauce and gets only a few minutes. If you plan to strain it out, that is fine; if you intend to blend it in, soften it in the butter first, before the flour, or the soup will taste sharp.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon of salt plus half a teaspoon of celery salt plus soy sauce, on top of salted peanut butter, adds up. Season at the end instead.
- YieldRoughly two and a half cups before straining, so four small servings. Thin with milk or light stock if it sets up thicker than you want.