Easy Potato Soup

It’s winter. It’s cold (relatively speaking – cold and damp in the Pacific Northwest). It’s time for soup! My grandma sent me a potato soup recipe a few weeks ago. This below recipe is based on the one she sent me. The main difference is I used way more potatoes, way more garlic and way more half-and-half than the recipe she sent me. I had to improvise a bit as I bought way more potatoes than what the recipe called for. This makes a thick creamy soup. You can thin it down a bit to your liking by adding more chicken stock or broth or half-and-half.

ingredients.

1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
¾ c. sliced onions (I used red)
½ c. chopped celery (finely chopped)
6 garlic cloves, minced
6 c. chicken broth or stock
2 ½ lb cubed potatoes (washed, skins on)
2 ¾ c. half-and-half
2 tsp. salt
½ tsp. white pepper
chopped chives

directions.

Melt butter in large saucepan over medium heat; add olive oil, onions, celery and garlic and cook until soft but not browned, about 10 minutes.
Add broth and potatoes; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer until potatoes are soft, about 20 minutes. Let cool slightly before pureeing.
If desired set aside a few chunks of potatoes – about 1 cup. Mash the cubes of potato slightly with a fork. Working in batches, transfer the remaining potato mixture to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. (If need be, add half-and-half to potato mixture when pureeing. I needed to do this with my last two batches.) Return blended soup (and mashed chunks of potato) to a soup pot.
If you haven’t already used your half-and-half, add now or add remaining; gently rewarm but do not boil on low heat. (This will take a while. I let mine simmer on the stove for a few hours – maybe two or three.) Season with salt and white pepper. Garnish with chives when serving. (Use fresh if you can find them. I had to use dried.)

I started out using 4 cups of chicken broth. This wasn’t enough. During the pureeing, I added all the half and half and still had a very, very thick soup. So I added two more cups of chicken broth to thin the soup down.

I knew the only thing that could make this soup better was to add a chunk of artisanal bread slathered with butter. For dipping! So I broke my (somewhat new) cardinal rule of no driving one day of the week (Sunday usually works best for this), and drove to the grocery store (forgetting I had pink sulfur on my cheek – awesome – long story!) to buy my favorite bread in the world: La Brea Bakery Rosemary and Olive Oil Round. (I swear I could eat an entire loaf in one sitting.)

The bread made the meal complete. Nearly half a loaf of bread later I had barely made a dent in the soup. (I tend to eat more bread than soup when eating soup and bread.) No worries. Now I have an entire week’s worth of lunches. And probably dinners, too. I guess I’ll need to buy some more bread…

Recipe rating: 