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.