Potato Soup

One of my favorite comfort foods is potatoes. It doesn't really matter to me how they're cooked - mashed, scalloped, baked, twice-baked, fried as pancakes - because it's going to be good no matter what. This potato soup recipe is no different. It was so good and rich and creamy. It was a total hit and really did the trick on a cold night.

Potato Soup

Serves: 8

¼ C unsalted butter
2 C chopped yellow onion
1 C chopped celery
½ t salt
¼ t cayenne
1 bay leaf
2 T chopped garlic
8 C chicken broth
2 large baking potatoes (about 2 pounds), peeled and diced
¼ C heavy cream

Melt the butter in a large, heavy pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onions, celery, salt and cayenne and cook, stirring, until the onions are soft and lightly golden, about 5 minutes. Add the bay leaf and garlic and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the broth and potatoes and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, until the potatoes are soft, about 30 minutes.

Remove the soup from the heat. Discard the bay leaf. With a hand-held immersion blender, or in a food processor or regular blender in batches, process until smooth. Slowly add the cream and stir to blend.

To serve, ladle into soup bowls and serve hot.

Mmmmm. That's good stuff. First of all, some changes I made. The recipe calls for all of the potatoes to be processed until smooth. I prefer some chunkiness to my potato soup, so I only processed half of the soup mixture, leaving the other half with some of the potato pieces intact. I also didn't add any celery because I didn't want to buy a whole thing of it and not have any other way to use it. I added a little celery seed instead. And I most certainly didn't chop two whole cups of onions. I cut a few rings of an onion and it was the perfect amount.

I also halved the recipe. For the base of the soup, it calls exclusively for chicken broth so we're talking four cups of broth. Of course, this means the soup had a very strong, slightly overpowering taste of chicken broth. I think next time I will cut the broth with some water, maybe go 3/1 or even 2/2. It just distracted from the taste of the potatoes and other ingredients. It was still good, though.

I dressed the soup up with some shredded cheese and chopped parsley from my little herb garden on the porch. The soup was nice and peppery, very brothy, and had a few potato chunks. I think I will cook the potatoes for a shorter amount of time when I make this again and also puree a smaller amount of the soup. To me, it's not really potato soup unless you can see and taste the potatoes. This was incredibly good, though, and definitely fit the bill as an ideal comfort food.

French Onion Soup

I'm weird about onions. I won't eat them raw, like on a sandwich or hamburger, unless they're chopped up in salsa, and I really don't like red onions. I find them to be incredibly strong. But I will go to town on some onion rings and French Onion Soup. I've had this soup at restaurants before where it was really good, and the Husband made me some French Onion Soup years ago right after we were married that was wonderful. A few weeks ago, the Husband and I went to a local restaurant where I ordered a crock of French Onion Soup. They may as well have called it French Where's-the-Onion Soup, because as I slurped my way closer and closer to the bottom of the bowl, the only things I had consumed were infinitely salty beef broth, some croutons and a mass of stringy cheese. The only things in my soup that resembled onions were microscopic and had been cooked to an oblivion and had started to disintegrate. Very disappointing. That experience was not wasted, though, as it spurred me to make this recipe the following week.

French Onion Soup

Prep: 20 minutes
Cook: 50 minutes
Serves: 4

2 T butter or stick margarine
4 medium onions, sliced
2 cans (10.5 oz) condensed beef broth
1.5 C water
1/8 t pepper
1/8 t dried thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
4 slices French bread, ¾ to 1 inch thick, toasted
1 C shredded Swiss or mozzarella cheese
¼ C grated Parmesan cheese

1. Melt butter in 4-quart nonstick Dutch oven over medium-high heat. If desired, cook onions in 12-inch nonstick skillet; after cooking, transfer onions to Dutch oven to complete the soup. Stir in onions to coat with butter. Cook uncovered 10 minutes, stirring every 3-4 minutes.

2. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cook 35-40 minutes longer, stirring well every 5 minutes, until onions are light golden brown (onions will shrink during cooking.)

3. Stir in broth, water, pepper, thyme and bay leaf. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer 15 minutes. Remove bay leaf.

4. Set oven to broil. Place bread in 4 ovenproof bowls or in individual casseroles. Add onion soup. Top with Swiss cheese and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Place bowls on cookie sheet or in pan with shallow sides.

5. Broil with cheese about 5 inches from heat 1 to 2 minutes or just until cheese is melted and golden brown. Watch carefully so cheese doesn’t burn. Serve with additional French bread, if desired.

I think with this recipe, I was so excited to make it that I didn't slow down the process enough and consider it from all angles. First, I was so focused on just getting the onions sliced that I didn't ensure they were sliced thin enough and that all slices were made with a cut of the same width. Looking back, some slices were cut perfectly and some were cut a little on the wide side, so the end result when they were all in the pan was that some cooked too fast and some didn't get the full amount of cooking time required. The thinnest slices were starting to burn just as the thicker slices were turning that nice golden brown that is evident of French Onion Soup. So that was an issue.

The other thing was that when I was in the store, I decided I really didn't want to buy a whole loaf of French bread just for the two slices required for this recipe. I decided to use some whole wheat sandwich buns I already had. Wrong! Even after toasting said sandwich buns, they immediately began to get soggy upon putting them in the bowl with the soup, plus the buns were nowhere near dense enough to match French bread. Most unfortunate.

And going back to the onions, I opted to cook them in a non-stick skillet before putting them in the soup pot. Once they were done, or more precisely, once I could see that any further cooking would result in some incinerated onion slices, I put them into the pot with the broth and other ingredients.

I also used slices of Provolone to top the soup instead of Swiss cheese, simply because I had Provolone on hand. It was good and I could tell no difference between that type of cheese and any other that would be appropriate for this soup. It's gooey - it's melty - it's good.




The ultimate decision, however, is how the soup tasted. It was... okay. Not mind blowing. Much better than the restaurant soup that I had, but still not awesome. It was the onions and the soggy bread that really sealed the deal. However, this can easily be remedied to make a better soup next time. I really want to perfect this before fall.

Yucatan-Style Chicken, Lime and Orzo Soup

I did a little bit of research before writing this blog entry to find out more about this soup. I found it on the Epicurious site and it looked pretty popular. But now that I go back and see some of the reviews, I'm stumped. Lots of people said it was bland, some said it was the best thing they've ever had, and only a few mentioned the presence of lime in this dish. I don't know what lime has to do with the Yucatan area of Mexico, but they certainly must like it. However, the Husband and I didn't.

Yucatan-Style Chicken, Lime and Orzo Soup

3/4 cup orzo (rice-shaped pasta)
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium white onion, thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 jalapeño chiles, thinly sliced
3/4 pound skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut into matchstick-size strips
5 cups low-salt chicken broth
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 large tomato, seeded, chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Fresh cilantro sprigs


Cook orzo in pot of boiling salted water until just tender. Drain well.

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and chiles. Sauté until onion begins to brown, about 4 minutes. Add chicken; sauté 1 minute. Add broth, lime juice, and tomato. Simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 3 minutes. Mix in orzo, then chopped cilantro. Season soup with salt and pepper. Ladle soup into 4 bowls. Garnish with cilantro sprigs. Makes 4 servings.

Again, I halved this recipe because it's just the two of us and, well, this soup looked a little suspicious. It's better to make a small portion of something that's inedible rather than a large portion. But let me say that this soup wasn't inedible, and it didn't even, as the Husband and I joked, "put the 'Yuc' in Yucatan." It was okay, but we were correct that it wasn't all that filling, and the lime was just so strong. I didn't even put the full halved amount into the soup because I was a little wary of that much sour in the broth. It was okay.




I did a few things differently. Instead of orzo, I used whole wheat brown rice from Whole Foods. We bought it dried in bulk and it's so good. Very nutty and a lot like the sticky rice you would find at a good Asian restaurant. That helped add some bulk to the soup. I used one chicken breast and did the thin slices. I only used one jalapeno, but I think two may have helped to overpower the lime juice somewhat. We didn't use nearly as much onion as it calls for. What is it with recipes calling for an entire onion? Ridiculous. Then I dropped a handful of cilantro into the soup which was a good kick.

This soup really had potential but the lime just turned us off. The rest of it wasn't good enough to where we would likely try it again with less lime; I think this is just a dud.

Beer Cheese Soup

There are a few truths that we hold fast to in life:

1. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
2. The only sure things are death and taxes.
3. If you see this Beer Cheese Soup in a dark alley, train your sights and shoot to kill, leaving no survivors.

Beer Cheese Soup

1 T butter
½ C chopped onion
½ t minced garlic
1 t Worcestershire sauce
1 (12 fl oz) can or bottle light beer
1 (14.5 oz) can chicken broth
3 T cornstarch
2 C half and half
2 C shredded sharp Cheddar cheese

Melt the butter in a 4 ½ quart soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and Worcestershire sauce and stir well. Add the beer and raise the heat to high and boil for 3 minutes to evaporate the alcohol. Add the chicken broth and bring the soup
back up to a boil. Lower the heat to medium-low and simmer.

Combine the cornstarch with 3 tablespoons water and stir until smooth. Set aside.

Add the half and half and shredded cheese to the soup. Stir constantly until the cheese melts. Then stir in the cornstarch mixture. Stir constantly until the soup is thick, about 2 minutes.

When I got home last night, I was pleasantly surprised to see the Husband was already in the kitchen chopping onions, measuring butter and pouring beer. He looked so happy and I was forever grateful for him starting dinner. I even went to a great bakery in town to pick up some small bread bowls to put the soup in. I was prepared for this to be a feast!

Boy, was I wrong.

The soup was thin, grainy, totally uncheesy and all I tasted was onion. It also never really thickened up. I know we followed the recipe to a tee. And then when I pulled the bread bowls out of the bag, there was a trace of mold on the bottom of the loaves. I had to cut off the bottom crust, therefore leaving no reliable barrier from keeping the soup from leaking out the bottom. Good thing the soup never even left the pan, huh? We tried a few spoonfuls each, added Tabasco sauce and more cheese and debated adding more ingredients before deciding there was no use in wasting more cheese/half and half/Tabasco if there was no guarantee those items would make the soup palatable. So we made burritos instead.

And to top it all off, soup doesn't photograph well. And yes I'm sure it has nothing to do with my photographic skills - what are you trying to say? At any rate, I took that as a sign that the soup must be evil and wouldn't stand for its picture to be taken.

My rating - this soup was a colossal failure. But I still love the Husband for trying and I know this wasn't operator error. The recipe just sucked.