Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Loaded Baked Potato Soup

      Last night we were looking for another super simple, inexpensive, delicious meal that everyone would eat...same as basically every other night. It was one of those, "Chopped" scenarios where we needed to see what we could make from the ingredients we had on hand. After a quick scan we pulled together potatoes, chives, bacon, sour cream and cheese.  Well, now, we can't just have baked potatoes. Can we?
 
     We can if it's a soup! I also grabbed a few staples from the pantry: a bit of onion, a clove of garlic and a frozen chicken stock from the deep freeze.
 
     First we preheated the oven to 350 deg F.

     Next we browned the onions in the bottom of our cast iron pot. Once translucent, we added the garlic and the frozen chicken stock. It only takes the stock about 10-15 minutes to thaw in the pot with this method. By that time the onion and garlic will be fully reduced and ready to be incorporated. Once the stock thawed we added the potatoes. We used 2.5 - 3 lbs, check how big your bag of potatoes is and go from there, guesstimate. We used roughly 15 small Russet potatoes, but that would probably have only been 6-7 standard med-large Yukon Gold potatoes.
 
     When we put the potatoes in we also put the bacon into the oven for about 15 minutes. We like it nice and crispy. Also the crispier the bacon, the easier it is to crumble and incorporate into the soup. The potatoes boiled until they were soft and easily cut with a fork, or about 20 minutes.
 
 
 
 
     Next we removed the bacon from the oven to cool a little and blended the potatoes and broth with the immersion blender. We added a dollop of sour cream for richness and also threw in a handful of shredded cheese. Tip: Buy a block of cheese and shred it yourself. It's way cheaper and not that much harder. Plus you don't get the additives used for keeping the shredded cheeses from sticking to themselves. We hit all of that with the immersion blender again!
 
     Then we crumbled the slightly cooled bacon, reserved the bacon grease off to the side (you'll see why), and added it and some chopped chives to the mix. We let that all simmer for a little while to let the flavors mingle and get to know each other.
 
 
     In the meantime we put our already preheated oven back into use. While I was digging through the pantry before I stumbled across and box of organic pre-mixed pop overs. It was a gift given during a Yankee swap, and I'm just not one to throw stuff out, so we decided to give it a go. We greased a muffin tin with the reserved bacon fat- there it is- to tie it's flavors in with the rest of the meal. Oh, yeah, and to make it awesomer! Then we ladled in the mix and followed the box recipe. They turned out great physically with a beautiful puff. However the flavor lacked (I know, who would have guessed?!) and we were glad we had greased the tins with bacon.
 
     
  
 
 
     We served the soup with another small dollop of sour cream, garnished with a few more bacon crumbles, and shredded cheese. All together it was a fantastic meal, made in minimal dishware, that everyone enjoyed and was made for pennies with things I had in the fridge. Of course we also managed to squeak out a few small portions for lunch the next day too. I call that a win.
 
Note: We also reserve bacon grease to use when we season our cast iron cookware. It works like a dream.
 
Enjoy!
 
Simple City Sam

 

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