As I've mentioned, we are both unemployed. So, we are therefore broke. I wanted something yummy to eat that would not require the purchase of more food. I also love potato soup, but have never made it from scratch. I figured since the weather is starting to get cooler that I should learn to make it myself. I did some searching for recipes - I was looking for one that didn't require heavy cream as I didn't have any on hand. So, I combined a few and came up with the following. I did all of the cooking in a cast iron dutch oven.
6 T butter
1 medium Vadalia onion, diced
6 oz Canadian bacon
1/2 C AP flour
3 C chicken broth (mine was low sodium)
3 large baking potatoes, peeled and diced
? minced garlic
? parsley
1 t dried chives
2 C milk
1 1/2 - 2 C cheese
S&P to taste
Heat butter in pot and add onion and Canadian bacon, saute until tender. Add flour, stir until well blended. Add chicken broth and stir over medium head until thickened and bubbling. Add potatoes and bring to simmer. Reduce to medium low, cover and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Add milk and cheese, parsley and chives. And salt and pepper as necessary.
Makes 6-8 servings, depending on how much you consider a serving.
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I'm not sure exactly how much cheese I put in. I shredded a cup of organic extra sharp vermont cheddar (something I found when cleaning out the fridge) and thought it wasn't enough, so I did some more...and then I added a bit more at the table, but Kevin didn't. Since my chicken broth was low sodium and my butter was unsalted, I put a good bit of salt in the soup, but I have no clue how much. At some point towards the end I threw in some (dried) minced garlic, but I think it was such a modest amount that it didn't add anything to the soup. I had Canadian bacon in the freezer, so that is what I used. Regular bacon would've been better. One recipe listed country ham, that would've probably been better as well. Also, this was a lot of tater chunks. Two and a half potatoes probably would've been perfect, but then I would have had a random half a potato left over, so I did three. Also, I think a tad bit more flour would've been good to thicken things up just a bit more, but I like really thick potato soup. Oh, and we put nice bacon bit in the soup at the table. Yeah, I need bacon with my potato soup, I admit it.
All in all, it was yummy!