LJ's Disappearing Potato Soup

It's been a while, and I've made a few notable items, but this is the one I feel like sharing the recipe to right now. It is so delicious, it pretty much leaves me at a loss for words.

I couldn't find a potato soup recipe I liked, so I took it upon myself to make one. I scoured the net and found parts I liked, but the over all idea I didn't always care for. I have tried to make potato soup in the past, and it turned out nicely for one day, and one day only. I am ashamed to say, the simplest of facts escaped my notice at the time: pasturization. Doh. This was some years ago though and I have not buried a pot of potato soup in the Failed Recipe Graveyard out back in quite a while. Mostly because I haven't had the heart to try it again. This month has been so rainy and abismal though, it practically begged for a comforting, creamy, tasty potato soup.

And so, my Disappearing Potato Soup is born! I bestow it onto all readers henceforth, for your indulgement and enjoyment. Don't get fat.

Note on the chicken broth. I really love Pacific broths. They're just so much more flavorful and make all the difference. I don't know what they have in stores near you, but you can get it nearly anywhere there is an organic aisle around here, or at Costco. Use whatever you can though.

5 lbs white or gold potatoes (waxy fleshed, not for baking)


3 medium to large carrots

2 small to medium onions

1 clove minced garlic (or 1 tsp pre-minced)

1 LB thick cut bacon (about 1/8 inch if possible)

1 and 1/2 quarts chicken broth

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup sour cream

4 tsp kosher salt (or to taste)

1 & 1/2 tsp white pepper

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

fresh cracked black pepper (& grains of paradise - optional) to taste

garnish of fresh parsley, chives or dill, your choice

Preheat oven to 300, place bacon on sheet tray in one layer. Cook in oven for 1 hour, check every 15 minutes for progress. As bacon gets closer to being done, reduce oven to 250-275 for the last 15 or 20 minutes. Turn all pieces at least once and rotate tray in oven. Bacon should have enough "chew" so that it can be rough chopped without absolutely crumbling apart when cut.
While bacon is cooking, peel and small dice the carrots and onions. Peel and cube your potatoes.
If bacon is not done by this time just go ahead and pour 4 tbs (1/4 cup) of bacon grease into your 6 quart pot and return bacon to oven to finish.
Saute onions and carrots for 3-5 minutes over medium heat, add garlic, saute 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add potatoes and chicken broth to pot. Bring to boil and then reduce to simmer for 25 minutes or until all veggies are very tender.

When done reserve about 2 cups of the potato cubes aside. Reserve less if you want a thicker soup.
At this point you want to puree what remains in the pot. Use a blender, stick blender, mixer or even a hand masher if necessary. Work in batches if needed.
Once all smooth, add all the creams, salt and spices mix well, and taste. Adjust as necessary. Add reserved potato cubes.
Add chopped bacon to individual servings. Garnish with herbs if desired.

Weird weather means more soothing soup

This weather has been spasmodic to say the least. One day it's hot and muggy, the next it's cold and windy. I can't stand it! And neither can my garden plants apparently, as 4 of my tomato plants up and croaked on me last week. I figure they were weaklings and don't want them anyway.

Anyway. As the title says, weird weather means more soothing soups and have I got the soothing soup for you. Matzo Ball Soup. A traditional Jewish soup, I was introduced to it about 15 years ago by the daughter (or was it the niece?) of a couple of friends. It has been a tasty ongoing experience ever since. Last year I learned how to spiffy up my soup with a most excellent lesson from my friend Carolynn. I have been completely happy doing it her way ever since and always could be completely happy if it was the only way I ever knew. However, I made one major alteration to her design by making my own chicken stock to cook everything in. Mercy Me and I DO declare, it is something I will Never Not do again.

I have always felt that making stocks and broths eluded me greatly and felt a little bad that a culinary basic was supposedly beyond my grasp. Who knew all I needed to do was look up a really good recipe?? I saw Ina Garten from the Food Network making her chicken stock and was intrigued to try it. My only beef with her chicken stock is that she uses whole chickens, cooks them to death, then tosses them, meat and all. Wasteful! Apparently a number of other people agree with me on this point as shown via the message comments left on her recipe on the FN site.  So, this is what I do/did:

I made mine in a 12qt pot which was too small but it worked out anyway and I only used about 7 or 8lbs of chicken. I used all thighs and drum sticks plus the giblets, spine and carcass of one spatchcocked chicken (use my dictionary.com link for that word). I first brined them all in a solution of 1/8 cup table salt (or 1/4 cup kosher salt) plus 2tbs sugar per quart of water for a couple hours (I feel 4 hours would be better in the future). Then I threw everything in the pot that her recipe calls for except for cutting her salt in at least half because I brined the meat. Cooked it for around an hour at a very gentle simmer, almost not noticable because of the smaller pot most likely. Removed all the chicken parts and removed whatever meat came off easily, threw all the skin, bones and bits back in the pot and cooked it more until it had reduced a good deal and looked a nice deep golden color.

After cooling I strained out the solids, mushing them a bit in a colander to get all the liquid out. Cooled it some more and chilled it over night until the fat had set up good on the top. What ever you do, DO NOT throw this fat away! Perish the thought! Cook with it! I put mine in an ice cube tray, two tablespoons to a cube, covered with plastic wrap and froze it for future use. It just so happens that matzo balls require two Tbs of oil per package, ... I wonder what is slick like oil but a much tastier alternative? HMMMM. ::wink wink::

So that's the basic jist of it. I can't give away everything, you should experiment yourself! Meanwhile, enjoy this delectable picture of the finished product. Num num.

Soothing Soups

With ourselves knee deep in winter and soon to be the same in snow, I thought it was a good time to break out the soup pots again. There's nothing like a good, hearty, satisfying bowl of soup when you're weary from the dreary. Ha. I rhyme. Anyway.  I bought this butternut squash after seeing an episode of "Good Eats" a few weeks back, intrigued by how tasty and simple Alton Brown made it all look. Well, it IS kind of simple, if you have the time. And it IS tasty, I'll give him that.

The poor thing sat in my fridge for nigh on two weeks before I got around to even Thinking about cooking it up. The good news is that it didn't rot, (but I get the suspicion that it was on its way to going down hill), so the squash keeps very well even if you're mean to it. My particular squash had a sticker with instructions, very similar to Alton's but I followed his since it was his recipe I was using. BTW, you can look his up on Foodnetwork.com by inputting "butternut squash soup alton brown". I'll leave the details to him, but the changes I made were these:

I tossed in a little cup of cinnamon applesauce we had sitting around on a whim. I'm not sure if it made a difference or not because it was so small.

I felt the finished product was kind of boring, so I diced and sauteed a small sweet onion and about three nice sized carrots in some bacon fat and added it to the soup, leaving the veggie addition chunky.

I added a little more salt than he called for, probably another 1/2 tsp of kosher.
I also used a little candied ginger instead of the fresh that he called for because I didn't have any.
Added maybe a 1/4 tsp of powdered ginger to help pump it up a bit.
Black pepper in addition to white pepper.
A dash of worcestershire sauce because I felt it was lacking depth of flavor. It helped but I ended up adding a dash of Bragg Liquid aminos as well, for some "umami" (long U, oo).
I think I would've added some nice chunks of bacon if I'd felt like cooking it, but I was tired.
Also added about a tbs or more of salted butter in the beginning before making all the other additions.
Oh yeah, and I put probably a good tsp or two of paprika in which was good too. I'm sure if you have the smoked kind it would be even better. Unless you Really feel like roasting peppers to add directly.

On the FN site there are suggestions to have it with cinnamon, brown sugar sans honey or with the honey too, apples, sweet potatoes (never white apparently), dallops of sour cream or yogurt. So apparently you can make it more sweet or savory depending on how you like it.

I recommend letting the flavor develop for as long as possible, as much as an hour or so at a just warm temp, stirring now and then to prevent scorching. I liked it much better when I did that. I think I will be adding this to my list of warming soups for those bone-chilling fall & winter days.

**Update** It is not only much better the next day but it is also Excellingly good with sour cream.

Bon appetit!