Broccoli Cheddar Soup

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For lunch this afternoon, I decided to try a broccoli cheddar soup, the finished product is pictured to the right. I was fairly happy with how it came out, but I'm definitely going to try a few things differently next time. So here's the recipe, and as before, my notes are added at the end...

1/4 c butter
1 onion, diced
2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
16 oz frozen chopped broccoli (I used fresh instead)
1 qt chicken broth
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 1/2 c whole milk
8 oz sharp cheddar
Salt, to taste

Melt butter over medium heat in a stockpot. Cook onion in butter until softened. Add garlic and pepper; cook for 1 minute then stir in broccoli, and stir in chicken broth. Bring to a boil and simmer until broccoli is tender, 10-15 minutes.
Meanwhile, whisk flour into milk until dissolved. Stir into soup stirring frequently until thickened. Reduce heat, and stir in cheese until melted and heated through.
Season with salt to taste.

My notes:
I followed the basic instructions fairly closely, my main departure being that I used fresh broccoli instead of frozen. This ended up leading to the broccoli being a little more firm than I expected, but certainly not bad, just not the intent. Next time, I would probably cook it partially beforehand to soften it up. The consistency was fairly good, I considered putting the entire batch in a blender and seeing what that did to it, but chose not to. I liked having the extra chunks of broccoli in there.
Definitely get some -good- cheese for something like this. The sharper and cleaner taste of an upper-tier sharp cheddar would have gone a long way towards improving this. Still, it was very good, and I'll definitely be trying it again, as well as other similar recipes.
Enjoy! As always, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. Or requests of recipes to try or write about... I'm always open to experimenting!