Showing posts with label soup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soup. Show all posts

Friday, January 16, 2015

Bacon & Potato Cheesy Soup Recipe


Made this for dinner tonight - very rich and delicious. I will definitely keep these ingredients in mind for the next cold, winter's eve.

Bacon & Potato Cheesy Soup

Ingredients:

1 lb. bacon
1 onion, diced
3 stalks celery, thinly sliced
2 carrots, diced
3 red potatoes, washed and cut into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces (skin on)
2 medium brown potatoes, washed and cut into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces (skin on)
2 cups broccoli florets
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup 1/2 & 1/2
Italian parsley
grated cheese
black pepper
cayenne pepper

Directions:


1. Cut bacon in half. Cook each half separately in Dutch oven. After first batch is out draining, discard bacon grease. Add remaining bacon and cook. Discard all but 3 T. bacon grease. Chop bacon into small pieces.

2. Add onions, celery, and carrots to bacon grease. Saute until onions are starting to turn translucent.

3. Add potatoes, broth, 1 tsp. black pepper, 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper, and 2 T. chopped parsley. Bring to a boil. Cover, turn down heat, and simmer until potatoes are fork soft, about 20 minutes.

4. Add broccoli. Cook an additional 5-10 minutes until broccoli is done.

5. Add 1/4 cup chopped bacon and 1/2 & 1/2. Stir well and heat until steaming.

6. Ladle soup into bowls. Top with sprinkles of cheese, parsley, and bacon bits.

7. Enjoy!


Bacon & Potato Cheesy Soup before 1/2 & 1/2, cheese, bacon, and fresh parsley

Friday, October 31, 2014

Pumpkin Soup on Pumpkin Day


Technically, I chose a lovely squash. So, Pumpkin-Like-Squash Soup on Pumpkin Day it is.

Once upon a time, this chef (a loose definition of the word, please) saw a lovely recipe on a very popular social media site. This recipe featured cooking soup in an actual pumpkin - in the oven - instead of in a pan on the stove top. I posted the recipe to my page.

Never to find it again.

So I am chef/experimenter/food explorer attempting to make up my own recipe. Let's see what kind of meal that gives us on this last day of October, Pumpkin Day!


Pumpkin Soup for Pumpkin Day

Ingredients:


- perfectly sized pumpkin for your soup bowl (It has to fit in your oven. Do not use a carving pumpkin. I am hoping a squash of similar size and shape will work. The meat of this squash was wonderfully deep orange in color and very rich smelling.)

- one leek, washed and thinly sliced

- 3 cloves of garlic, diced

- 7 or 8 fresh sage leaves

- chicken broth, anywhere from 3 to 6 cups, depending on the size of your pumpkin bowl

- 1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese for the soup, additional for sprinkling on top of cooked soup

- fresh ground black pepper

- dash of cayenne pepper

- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of nutmeg, depending on your love of this spice

OVEN: 400 degrees F.



Directions:

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Cover jelly roll pan with parchment paper.

2. Prepare pumpkin (or squash). Remove lid and scoop out seeds and stringy parts of the pumpkin. Keep the lid. It goes without saying, but I will anyway. Do not pierce the base of the pumpkin or make holes in the sides! The soup will surely leak out. Put the pumpkin shell on the parchment paper-lined pan.

3. Add leeks, garlic, and sage. Fill the remainder of the pumpkin with chicken broth. Fill to the top of the inside of the pumpkin, leaving room for lid to close and enough space to add cheese and spices.


4. Add 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, peppers, and nutmeg. Replace lid.

5. Bake in oven for two hours. Pumpkin should be steaming hot, with soft, cooked flesh. Oh, you are going to love the fragrance of this cooking soup pot!

6. Remove lid. Scoop bits of cooked pumpkin flesh and soup into a bowl. Top with additional parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!


PS After cooking and devouring this fragrant soup, I decided that crumbled bacon bits and some half and half would go very well with pumpkin-in-a-shell soup.



Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn't keep her.
He put her in a pumpkin shell.
And there he kept her - very well.


I adore pumpkins. But I don't imagine I would enjoy being kept in a pumpkin shell for very long.