O'Potato Soup!

The Celtic tunes were playing, the food was plentiful, and the laughs shared among friends were loud and heartfelt. 

In keeping with tradition, last night we had a house full of friends to enjoy a St. Patrick's Day feast with all the fixings -- corned beef and cabbage, carrots and potatoes, Irish soda bread -- and of course, a variety of beers.  Friends rounded out the menu with an array of appetizers and an impressive spread of desserts.  A true feast!

Also in keeping with tradition, this morning Jeff made a fabulous corned beef hash that the boys enjoyed with eggs and toast.  Yum!!   

I guess everyone is watching their intake of starch these days though -- because we had a ridiculous quantity of potatoes left over this year.  So much so, that I had to figure out something to do with them -- they're just too yummy after soaking up all the flavor from the corned beef.  I've never made potato soup before, but I figured I would give it a whirl.

This is definitely NOT your traditional potato soup -- and never, in a million years, did I think my "winging it" recipe would be good enough to blog about -- but this soup was pretty darn good if I do say so myself!  Needless to say, I apologize for not having pictures of the process, but it's pretty straight forward. 

Here goes.  Let's call it O'Potato Soup!

You'll Need...
1/2 an onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
About a cup of carrots, chopped
4 cups chicken broth
6-8 potatoes, boiled
About 2 cups of milk
3 Tbs. flour
Pepper to taste
2 Tbs. sour cream
About a cup of corned beef, chopped

Step by Step

• Add onion, celery & carrots to stock pot along with chicken broth.  Bring to boil and allow to simmer for about 10 minutes or until the veggies are starting to soften
• While it's simmering, take 2 of the boiled potatoes and chop them up into bite size pieces, set aside
• Cut the remaining potatoes into large chunks and put into a blender or food processor.
• Add the majority of the broth/veggie combo into the blender, leaving about 1 cup (or a little more) in the stock pot 
• Puree the potatoes & broth until a smooth consistency
• In a separate bowl, whisk milk and flour
• Add to blender along with sour cream; mix well
• Return puree to stock pot and mix with remaining broth/veggies
• Add pepper to taste
• Add corned beef and allow to simmer

If you're not a fan of corned beef, I'm sure you could use bacon.... or no meat at all if you'd rather.  That said, the corned beef adds a lot of salt to the recipe, so if you don't use it, I'm sure you'll need to add salt for flavor. 

For my first time ever making a creamed soup, I was really happy with the consistency.  It definitely wasn't watery, but it wasn't a total puree either.  Keeping some of the veggies in tact and adding the corned beef was just perfect.

I used skim milk and light sour cream to try to keep the fat content in check.  Plugging all the ingredients into the Weight Watchers recipe builder, it looks like it's about 4 points for a 1 cup serving.   Not too bad for such a hearty soup!

 

Enjoy -- and Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my blog world friends!