I’m primarily a baker, but given that I’m technically not supposed to eat cake for dinner – yeah, I don’t get it either – I cook other foods too, and this time of year, its often soup, because nothing’s better than soup when it’s so cold and windy out that the snow is falling sideways. I only wish I was joking, people. It was bad yesterday. It was definitively a Soup Day

I still had most of a 5 lb bag of russets, so I made it a Potato Soup day.

This is the kind of recipe that supports a lot of experimentation. The basics are very basic – potatoes, onion, garlic, and stock – and a lot of changes can be made to change up the taste. Mine is seasoned with mustard powder, nutmeg, salt and seasoned pepper, and gets a lot of its flavor from the bacon fat I sauteed the vegetables in. You can just as easily use butter or olive oil, and season with Italian herbs or with dill or celery seed for a different flavor entirely.

Personally, I’m not going to change this one up much more; I nearly moaned when I ate my first bite last night.

The Best Motherfucking Baked Potato Soup Ever

6 medium russet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 Spanish onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
5 slices of thick-cut bacon, chopped
4 C chicken stock
4 oz soft goat cheese or goat cream cheese
1/4 C half and half
1/4 C AP flour
1/2 t dried mustard
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t sea salt
1/4 t California Seasoned Pepper

Chop bacon into half-inch pieces using kitchen scissors and render in a large pot. Remove bacon when crisp, draining on a towel, and saute onion until tender but not brown in the bacon fat. Add garlic and cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant.

Add flour and whisk until the flour is completely combined and the mixture is thick and bubbly. Add mustard and nutmeg and stir to combine.

Add diced potatoes and stir to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in chicken stock and cook, covered, until very tender. It took around twenty minutes for mine, with a fairly small dice, but may take longer with larger pieces of potato.

Mash potatoes with a potato masher until the soup is thick and there are no large pieces remaining. Add goat cheese/goat cream cheese and whisk until melted. Add half-and-half, and stir to combine.

Add reserved bacon and stir to combine. Serve hot.

It’s an easy recipe, but unbelievably delicious, and perfect for an easy supper on a cold night; given that it’s just as cold today, I suspect I’ll be eating it again.

Soup’s so easy, and hearty, and it’s getting to be that time of year when easy and hearty are pretty much how I eat. (In summer, it still has to be easy, which explains the many feta and mushroom pizzas and salad sandwiches that I consume from May to September) Anyway, I decided that I was in the mood for black bean soup this week. Given that I 1) get home at 7:30 and 2) am epically lazy, it was going to have to be in the crockpot. So I searched for crockpot specific recipes – there are a lot, but none of them were calling to me.

Which is, naturally, when we wing it. What I came up with below:

Black Bean Soup

1 Spanish onion, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

6 slices of thick-cut bacon, cut into 1″ pieces with kitchen scissors

3-15 oz cans of black beans, drained

2-14.5 oz cans of diced tomatoes with green chiles

2 C chicken stock

3 T chili powder

2 T cumin

Fry bacon in skillet, then add chopped onions, peppers, and jalapeno, and cook in bacon fat until soft. When you’re about a minute from done, toss in the garlic. Drain.

Add bacon and vegetables to crock pot and top with black beans, tomatoes, chicken stock and spices. Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours.

And that’s it. This is why I love my crockpot more than any other appliance, ever, people. Dinner in it is almost always this easy.