Potato Plus Soup
This is the perfect cold winter night soup. It can be made with plain water, but it is much better with ham or pork stock, and still good with chicken stock. If you are using water, you may need a bit of extra seasoning. As with everything, taste and taste again.
Ingredients:
Chicken or Ham Stock – at least 5 cups
4 large Potatoes – peeled or not your option, I like the peeling on the Potatoes
Ham – about a cup or 3 pieces of Bacon – fried and crumbled
1 teaspoon of Dill
1 teaspoon of Thyme
2 tablespoons of Butter
1 large Onion – minced
1 tablespoon of chopped or crushed Garlic
2 stalks of Celery sliced
2 Carrots, peeled and shredded
Milk or Cream – I use large Can of Milk plus ½ cup more of Milk
3 tablespoons of Flour
Broccoli 1 cup of flowerets
Salt and Pepper
Directions:
Wash the potatoes well, and decided whether or not you are going to peel them. I like the added texture of leaving the peeling on, unless I am serving the soup to guest. Dice them into uniformed pieces, and boil them, in the stock, until they are tender. In a separate skillet, add the butter, and sauté onions, ham, garlic, celery, and carrots. If using bacon, fry the bacon first, remove it from the skillet, and in the same skillet add onions to bacon grease and continue with the rest of the ingredients.
When the potatoes are al dente, you will want to purée or mash well, at lest half of the potatoes. You may either use a potatoes masher, the food processor or blender. After you have mashed half of the mixture, add the sautéed meat and vegetables. Mix milk and flour well, in a separate bowl, making sure there are no lumps, and pour into pot, through a sieve, stirring vigorously so that no lumps form. Bring soup to a boil, then reduce and simmer, add chopped broccoli, and correct flavors. Let it simmer for about ten more minutes, until it thickens and broccoli is cooked to your taste, I like it firm.
The soup is often thick enough, once you mash the potatoes, due to the starch in the potatoes, so you may not want to add flour, but there are those whom like a very thick almost stew like texture. If you used bacon instead of ham, crumple the bacon on top of soup before serving.
Options:
You may omit broccoli, dill, and thyme and add two clams, for a hearty chowder.
Ham Stock
Ham stock is a great base for potato soup or white bean soup or cream of broccoli soup or for lentils. It can also be used as a base for sauces to serve over ham, the next time you make a ham or ham steaks.
Ingredients:
1 Ham bone
Water – enough to cover ham
1 whole Onion – with the skin
6-10 tops of Celery stalks – the leaves which no one likes to eat
2 Carrots – washed, but not peeled
1 Bay Leaf – optional
1-2 teaspoons of Parsley – optional
Pepper
Directions:
When serving a ham, after it has been carved, and the meat which is easy to access removed, you can then cut off the rest of the meat that did not simply slice off – reserve this meat. Take the whole bone, including fats, and put it in a large pot, covered with water. If you cooked the ham with cloves, remove the cloves before boiling. Bring it to a boil, and skim scum. Reduce heat and add a whole onion, with the skin, for additional color, the tops celery stalks, and carrots. You may add additional seasonings, but you do not have to, as what you want is that nice taste from the ham.
Simmer for at least 2-3 hours. Let it cool, and then strain it through a very fine sieve. Refrigerate overnight – a hard crust of fat will form; remove that fat into a plastic bag and discard, in trash. The fat will clog your drains; never put it down the sink.
You can return the clean stock to the stove and reduce it, by simply cooking it down, until most of the water has evaporated. When you need the stock, you would just add more water again. Do not salt this stock – it will already have some salt because it is a ham stock. You will salt the food you prepare. The stock can be kept in the refrigerator for a week or for six months in the freezer.
