2014 Recipe Challenge - Week 4

For Christmas, Jesse got me an awesome Crock-Pot. Not only can you program the cooking time but it can stir. I have been dying to test it out and I made sure to do that this week. I wanted to do a soup of some sort because I wanted to use the stirring function. So to Pinterest I went and boy oh boy, there a lot of soups to make in a Crock-Pot. So, I narrowed it down by what was on sale that week and potatoes were super cheap! So potato soup became our new recipe of the week.

I love me some potato soup. Growing up it was one of my favorite things my Grandma would make. Her soup was very simple, from what I remember and I couldn’t find anything kind of like hers for the Crock-Pot. I feel like I looked at million potato soups before picking the one I did. I ended up picking the recipe I did because I didn’t have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff.

I found pin which lead me to the blog called Feeding Big and used their recipe.

http://feedingbig.com/2012/10/potato-soup-2.html

Ingredients:

3 lbs potatoes, diced (about 1 inch squares, no need to peel)

4 Tablespoons garlic powder (I used 2 cloves fresh garlic)

1 medium onion, chopped

38 oz chicken stock (I used Vegetable stock)

8 oz cream cheese, softened

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

Instructions:

Add potatoes, garlic, onion and chicken stock into crock pot. Cover. Cook on high for 5 hours or low for 8 hours.

Remove soup from slow cooker. Puree in blender or food processor with cream cheese (I used an immersion blender). Pour back into crock pot to keep warm.

Seems pretty simple. 

I got to make this recipe since it was a Crock-Pot one and made it while Jesse was at work. I peeled the potatoes; I don’t care for potato skins unless they are fried. Then I cut up the onion.

Now, onions and I have a bad history. Most people eyes tear up and their noes might run a little but when I cut onions it looks like I have been beaten with a wet fish. My eyes are burning so bad it is hard for me to open them, they swell up and I cry. I was even chopping with my eyes closed at one point. Then my nose runs like crazy and I have to stop every  seconds to blow my nose or wipe the tears from my eyes. Usually Jesse handles all things that do with onions but since he was working I “maned” up and did. Which lend to me cussing at the onions and this post on Facebook “I hate onions. I hate chopping onions. I hate the smell of onions. I hate everything about onions. Death to all onions!”

After dealing with the onion, I just wanted to get out of the kitchen, so I went with garlic powder because I was not about to chop something else up. I also went with vegetable stock instead of the chicken stock. Everything except the cream cheese went into the Crock-Pot and then the waiting game starts. I did it on high for 5 hours because I wanted to it to be done before Jesse got home from work. 

Once it was done cooking, I added the cream cheese in chunks and used my stick blender to mix it all together and mash up the last of the potatoes. 

When it was dinner time Jesse fried some bacon, I went with the cheapest I could find just because we crumbled it up, and it didn’t make a big difference for the soup. We also added some cheese.

Jesse liked the soup very much. He ate 2 big bowls and was miserable afterwards. But he would pretty much eat anything with bacon in it and say it was amazing. 

I didn’t really care for the soup. I thought it tasted like onion. I couldn’t taste anything but onion.  And I don’t care for onions that much. Jesse likes onions so he was ok with that.

I think next time I will not add as much onion or cook the onion before I add it to the Crock-Pot.

We both ate 2 bowls that night and had enough for 2 leftovers. I had one of the leftovers bowls, and I think the onion was stronger after sitting a few days.

I think next time I’m going to figure out my Grandma’s potato soup and stick with that.