Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Yeah, yeah, not paper or fabric arts. But I do like to cook so today I’m posting a recipe. With winter-like weather back on us, I decided we needed soup for dinner. I especially like cream soups… like potato soup, or cauliflower soup.

What I did today was make potato cauliflower soup. Here are the ingredients and how I made it, you may want to adjust as this made a REALLY full pot of soup.

• 1 stick butter
• 4 carrots, peeled and diced
• 3 ribs of celery, diced
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic

Melt butter in dutch oven over low heat, add carrots. As the carrots start cooking, chop the celery, adding and mixing it up as you go. Do the same with the onion. When the onion is changing color, raise the heat a little and add the garlic. Continue to cook until you can see the garlic change color a bit. Or until you can smell it. Don’t let it brown.

Add in:

• 1 head cauliflower, diced
• 1 can of chicken or beef broth

You might also want to add a bit of water, I added about 1/2 a broth can full, just until all of the cauliflower is in contact with moisture. At this point I also added some dried parsley, fresh ground pepper, and a bay leaf. Cook this mixture, covered, oh, for 20 or 30 minutes, until the cauliflower is no longer crunchy. You can probably go longer, cauliflower doesn’t fall apart as much as you’d expect.

Next add:

• 1 lb potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 can chicken or beef broth

Mix everything up in the pot, and try to find the bay leaf you added earlier… it will be easier to find it about now. Probably better to find it before you add the potatoes, actually. Remove it, that 20 or 30 minutes should be enough bay leaf flavor for this soup.

Cook the soup just until the potatoes are done. After this point, unless you like mashed potato soup, try to stir gently. Pour in:

• 1 can evaporated milk

Now, to me this soup would be ready to finish, but since I have Ron to feed I added a package of diced ham. So, add in:

• 1 lb diced ham

(Then, if you are like me, suddenly remember that you bought mushrooms to go into the soup, but forgot to add them when you were sauteing everything in the butter. So go ahead and cook those in another pan if you are inclined. I have left them out of the recipe, as they didn’t add that much to the soup.)

Let that all come back up to a simmer while you are mixing in a shaker jar:

• 1/3 cup flour
• 2/3 cup milk

(add more milk or a bit of water if needed, I didn’t actually measure the thickener, just eyeballed it)

When the soup is back at a simmer or low boil, pour in the flour and milk mixture while stirring gently. If this is done right, the flour will actually absorb all that butter that has been floating on top all thru the cooking process. Cook, stirring as needed to keep from sticking, for at least another 2 minutes. You don’t want the taste of raw flour to ruin all your hard work!

I let this sit, after turning off the heat, for at least 30 min. before serving. Added more ground pepper, too. Never added any salt, as 2 cans of broth were plenty salty for me.

List of ingredients to follow, just because I know I can be confusing. :)

• 1 stick butter
• 4 carrots, peeled and diced
• 3 ribs of celery, diced
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 heaping teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 head cauliflower, diced
• 2 cans of chicken or beef broth, I used one of each
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 lb potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 1 lb diced ham
• 1/3 cup flour
• 2/3 cup milk

This was a massive amount of soup. Very filling, and also very tasty. We’ll be eating it for days unless I freeze some of it.

Any questions, ask away… I’m not a cooking blog, so you don’t get photos. :)

hugs,
Vyx

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

No Responses to “Cold weather cooking”