zonkered.net

Oh my God. This soup is like a religious experience.

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.

Before I get too deeply into Rachael Ray and my issues with, plus ridiculously easy tomato soup, I feel like I should point out one thing: I have a baking blog now. It’s called Live Every Week Like It’s Cake Week. That is all, carry on.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m really not all that fond of Rachael Ray – I can’t watch her on tv, she just grates, endlessly – but to give her her due, I did rely heavily upon her approximately five years ago, when I was fresh out of graduate school, 1500 miles away from my mother’s cooking, broke as hell (heh, some things don’t change), and in need of dinner seven days a week.

I made a lot of Rachael Ray recipes those first two to three years, and while she’s slowly been phased out in favor of Jamie Oliver, Tyler Florence, Dave Lieberman, and Ina Garten, plus lots of food blogs and the ever popular Recipes Sent By My Mother…there are still one or two 30 Minute Meals I make.

And yes, they’re all soups. You know me so well.

There are two great things about this soup. First, it’s adaptable. Out of shallots? Yes, an onion works fine. No vegetable broth? I’ve made it with chicken and just plain water with no adverse effects. Craving bacon? Fry up a few slices and saute the onions/shallots and garlic in the fat. Can’t stand spinach? No one says you have to put it in.

The second great thing about this soup is that it takes fifteen minutes to make, and the most complicated part is chopping the shallots. Seriously, that’s it. It’s a great option when you’re exhausted and broke (otherwise known as: me.)

Continue reading

I do actually eat things other than soup and various cake like items, honest. Just…not a whole lot.

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.

Continue reading

My mother’s reaction to what I was making for dinner was the skeptical “…onion soup?” that a lot of my food experiments get. Not sure why, as onion soup (particularly the French variety) is a standby in every Applebees and TGI Friday’s across the country. I think she’d be pleasantly surprised by this one, as it’s reminiscent of potato soup except, you know, without the potatoes.

It’s based mostly on Kayotic’s recipe with a couple of modifications: I only used two onions because one of my Spanish onions was approximately the size of my cat’s head, dill rather than thyme because dill is the best thing ever, and a shot of light cream towards the end, because that’s never a bad thing. Top with crumbled herbed goat cheese and you’ve got a pretty awesome dinner.

Continue reading