Category: Soups & Stews

Winter warmth – cheese & bacon potato soup

For my first experiment with this soup, I used both diced and sliced dehydrated potatoes.

Backstory:

I had received a free ten pound bag of Russets in the fall of 2020. With just the two of us, that was more than we could eat before it would go to ruin. So I bought a dehydrator and got to work.  The mandolin is helpful with slicing of vegetables. I made the potato slices 1/8th inch thick.  The dice was roughly a quarter inch dice.  In order to keep the potatoes from turning an off color, after slicing and dicing, I put them into a pot of boiling water to which I had added the juice of a half of a lemon. They stayed in the water about 4 minutes. Then, with a spyder ladle, I lifted them out and into ice water to stop the cooking.  Then I drained them thoroughly and patted them dry before putting onto the shelves of the dehydrator.  It takes about 6 -8 hours to dehydrate the 6 shelves of potato slices at 165 degrees Fahrenheit. I then loaded the potatoes into quart mason jars and used a Food Saver type machine with a “wide-mouth” jar device to seal the jars. Then into the pantry they went.

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Creamy Potato Soup

 

Safeway delivered 4 Diced Russet Potatoes huge russet potatoes a couple of days ago.  They look like they are this year’s crop, at least.  I decided with one I would make a soup.  With another I will be making Colcannon (Irish mashed potatoes) and the other two I am going to dice up and dehydrate for the coming winter.  We can’t eat four huge potatoes before they go off so drying is my go-to method for preservation (although freezing comes in second, only due to space in the freezer which is full to the brim from our summer gardening bounty).  I admit I am looking forward to just cooking with all the yum-licious foods I have been preserving since last Spring. However, I am growing weary of the preservation jobs. Continue reading “Creamy Potato Soup”