Monday, December 8, 2008

Potato Cheese Soup

This is one of those soups that is hard to mess up. The ingredients don't have to be measured exactly and it cooks up fairly quickly.

3 cups chopped potatoes (think bite-sized pieces)
1 can chicken broth
1/2 c chopped celery
1/2 c chopped carrots
1/4 c chopped onions
1 T parsley
1/2 t salt
pepper, to taste

Cook the above until tender. Add:

1 1/2 c milk
2 T flour

Cook until thick. Add:

1/2 Velveeta, cubed

Cook on medium-low heat until melted.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly, so here's what I did:
Sauteed onions and carrots with celery flakes until onions were cooked.
Cut up some fingerling potatoes.
Put a chicken bullion cube in the pot and put enough water in to cover the veggies and potatoes.
Added some celery salt and black pepper.
Boiled for a few minutes until the potatoes were tender, then lowered the heat.
Mixed some milk and flour, stirred that into the soup and then put in a little bit more milk.
Added some Mexican flavor Velveeta.
I measured everything by the trusty eyeball method (I wasn't making as much as the recipe calls for, so I used it as a guide only).
I think everything took me around 30 minutes or so.



As I said, this is hard soup to mess up - it can be adjusted to taste. I might recommend using two or three bullion cubes, but that is up to your taste completely. The Mexican Velveeta is a tip someone gave my mom. She prefers the taste of 1/2 regular Velveeta and 1/2 Mexican Velveeta. I used the celery flakes and celery salt because I can never find small quantities of celery at a reasonable price and have trouble using it up before it goes bad. Cooking the celery flakes in the soup reconstitutes them a little bit. I omitted the parsley because I just didn't have any on hand.

I love fingerling potatoes. They are generally comparable in price to other varieties of potatoes and their size and shape make them easy to cut up. They have good flavor in soups and roasts and cook nicely. They get soft but don't fall apart too much. If you can find a fingerling or baby potato assortment with multiple varieties of potatoes, go for it. The different flavors will blend nicely and give your soup a fuller flavor (also recommended in stews and mashed potatoes). They have thin enough skin that you can use them in most recipes without peeling them.

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Sounds good! Also, a tip for storing celery: cut it up into sticks, put in a plastic container, cover the celery with water, put on a lid and keep in the refrigerator. The water helps them stay crisp and it usually lasts a couple of weeks this way.

Anonymous said...

Another tip for celery. If you wrap the stalk completely in aluminum foil it will stay fresh up to two weeks.

Gin