Bacon and Potato Soup

I gotta be straight with you guys right off the bat. If you read the recipe for homemade deep dish pizza, you already know that I hate cheese. This is an insanely unfortunate thing. In restaurants especially, since the word "cheese" is in SO MANY THINGS that are SO GOOD without it. But when you look at your waiter and go, "I'd like a Philly Cheesesteak please, but with no cheese," there's only so many ways they can look at you without making you feel like a freak of nature. And don't even get me started on the stares of wonder when I pull the cheese off my pizza. (LOVE pizza, oddly enough.)

I have always re-tasted cheese through the years, because your taste buds are supposed to change and all that jazz. Mine haven't. It freakin' sucks.

So, besides my cheese-hate, there are a few other foods that are completely gag worthy to me. Included on this list are ranch dressing, mayo, heavy cream, and sour cream.

So when I see "Potato Soup" on a menu, I refrain from ordering because I can always bet that there'll be either heavy cream, sour cream, or cheese in it. Until now, I've always settled for using that Bear Creek mix and adding steak and corn to it, which is actually amazing by the way.

But recently one of my BFFs came up with a recipe that yields the most kick ass potato soup EVER without using ANY of the ingredients that usually ruin the soup for me. Me and her get together twice a week after the baby has gone to bed for the night to drink wine and cook together. We are so similar in our cooking tastes, I love it. I've known her since kindergarten. We walked together at graduation, and she was the maid of honor at my wedding.

So needless to say, when she showed me this recipe I knew I had to feature it on the blog. You're totally gonna thank me.

This soup is perfect for days where your front porch view is like this:

Okay, so first off, dice up a LOT of potatoes into really small pieces, as so. As far as amount goes, it's totally up to you, we had four people to feed and I wanted leftovers so I did quite a bit. Add diced pieces of carrot and celery, too.

Next, dice an entire package of bacon into little pieces. I actually used kitchen shears to do it because it was much easier. Crisp the shiz outta that bacon in the bottom of a soup pot, and when it's nice and golden add a diced onion to absorb all that bacony goodness. (Lots of dicing going on here.)

After a few minutes of letting the onions get to know the bacon, add that big ass bowl of diced potatoes, carrots, and celery. Add a ginormous spoonful of garlic (or two, or three...,) salt and pepper, and some dill. Cover it with enough water to just cover it all and add one chicken bouillon cube per cup of water. Bring it to a boil then let it simmer covered.

Alright, truth time again. As soon as the potatoes are cooked through enough to eat, you're supposed to remove a few cups of the soup and blend them before pouring back in. It makes the soup all thick and stuff and completes everything. But in real life, the Lucky Duck was flowing and we were all too busy laughing hysterically about how slippery the rug on the hardwood floor was.
So, um, yeah. We cooked it for awhile even after the potatoes were soft enough to eat. So the soup just thickened on its own. It was still equally amazing, so maybe you should just do that on purpose if you don't want to blend it. (I will admit though, I prefer the potato pieces to be a little firm still.)



Voila! (Yes, be jealous of the caramel chocolate cake in the background lol)

I would highly suggest serving this with a gigantic hunk of homemade bread, as shown. The bread is a lovely tool for wiping the sides of the bowl.

What are your favorite winter comfort foods? For me, it's always an amazing soup or stew with lots of bread. That, or pot roast.

-A.