Hot Potato

My grandmother used to make potato soup.

Well, that’s what she called it anyhow.  I thought it was closer to liquid mashed potatoes.  Which, considering how she made mashed potatoes (and how any leftovers inevitably became potato soup), was probably not all that inaccurate.

I’ve talked before about my two grandmothers and their widely varying styles of cooking.  At that time, I said that mashed potatoes was one of the things they came to make the same way, and that I could no longer remember which one changed to match the other.  Well, I must have been having a heavy duty brain fart that day, because it seems pretty clear to me now.  My working class, North-Carolina-raised farmgirl grandmother, with her muscular arms, used a potato masher, because that’s how it’s done.  My social climbing, mountains-of-Virginia-far-in-the-rearview, slightly supercilious grandmother thought that was far too much effort.  She used a stand mixer.  Making mashed potatoes was just like making cake batter, as far as she was concerned.  My other grandmother (on the paternal side) didn’t think of this as cheating, per se, I don’t believe ... but certainly she thought it was unnecessarily fancy.  The regular old masher and regular old puttin’-yer-back-into-it had been good enough for her mother—and, no doubt, her own grandmother, and great-grandmother, and so on all the way back to whichever of her ancestors arrived with John Smith in Jamestown¹—so it was obviously good enough for her.  Just a masher, a few pats of butter, and some salt: that was literally all you needed.  If she ever even added milk (before she started trying to please me, that is), I don’t recall it.  Whereas my other grandmother (on the maternal side) added enough milk—or even, sometimes, cream—that it became almost the consistency of pudding.  After a while of turning up my nose and/or begging, my paternal grandmother gave in and started using the mixer and the milk too.

And this is what I prefer for my mashed potatoes: they should be smooth, and creamy, and buttery, and salty.  I don’t need sour cream, per se (though it’s okay if you want to add that in), or any other fancy-schmancy spices, and I certainly don’t need gravy.  Like ketchup for fries, you only need gravy for mashed potatoes if they’re particularly crappy mashed potatoes (like you’d get from most fast food places²).  The mashed potatoes my paternal grandmother used to make (before I cajoled her into using the mixer) were lumpy, and more mushy than creamy, and definitely not smooth.  And some people like that sort of thing.  But it was not for me.

But, if you take creamy mashed potatoes and just add more milk to it, I’m not sure you get to call that “potato soup.” I suppose I might be misremembering and there was more to it than that, but I do recall not thinking that much of it.  It was only years and years later that I had some potato leek soup from a decent restaurant that I realized that potato soup might be a pretty cool thing after all.  Another popular restaurant version of potato soup is sort of the soup version of a baked potato: it’s usually served with bacon, and cheese, and often chives.  Now, potato leek soup is a pretty lovely dish, and (baked) potato soup is just fine, but at some point a few years back I decided I wanted to try combine the best of both versions.  I’m not sure what got into me, but I ended up making something that has become a family favorite: my youngest, in particular, asks for it quite regularly, and soon she’ll be able to make it even better than I can.

I started by scouring the Internet for recipes.  I was looking to see how other people were making it so I could figure out what elements I wanted to keep and which I wanted to toss out.  Now, in my view, the primary thing to get right in potato soup is the consistency: my grandmother’s was too thin for my taste, but obviously you don’t want it as thick as actual mashed potatoes.  And the way that the vast majority of recipes online achieve the proper consistency is the same way you get thickness in gravy: flour.  Now, at the time, I was either doing a Whole 30 or just fresh off one, and I certainly was looking to avoid grains.³  Surely there were better options than regular old flour!  And, I resarched that, I discovered a curious thing: one of the big alternatives to flour is ... potato starch.

And, I thought, well, you know what has lots of potato starch? Potatoes!

So essentially my recipe contains about twice as many actual potatoes as most recipes you can find on the web.  But I think it’s all the better for it.  Certainly the consistency can’t be beat.  Instead of leeks or chives, I use yellow onions and celery, and I retain the thyme common in the potato-leek varieties, and the cheese common in the baked-potato-adjacent varieties.  It makes for a thick, creamy potato soup with a lot of flavor, but still tastes enough like good old mashed potatoes to qualify as comfort food.  My family⁴ really seems to love it too.  So here it is, for your perusal, and (possibly) enjoyment.  Bon appétit.

Potato Soup

Ingredients

• 1 large yellow onion
• 6 – 8 stalks of celery
• 8 large potatoes(*), either Russets or Yukon golds, or a mix of the two
• 1 – 2 tbsp of ghee
• 4 – 5 large pinches salt
• 15 grinds black pepper
• 2 cups milk
• 1 carton chicken broth (about 32 oz)
• a “large amount” of thyme
• a “small amount” of garlic powder
• 1 – 2 handfuls of “pizza cheese”

(*) When you buy a bag of potatoes, of course, you don’t get any say in the size, and I’ve never seen a Yukon gold that I would classify as “large” in any event.  My rough ratio is that 3 medium potatoes count as 2 larges, and 2 small potatoes count as 1 large.  Just err on the side of too many rather than not enough and you should be fine.

Hardware

• a good chopping knife
• a good potato peeler
• a large pot (what my grandmothers would call a “stewpot”), preferably with a lid
• a stick blender (a.k.a. “immersion blender”)
• a spoon for stirring (I like wood, but you do you)
• a ladle for serving

Directions

This one is actually pretty simple.  Rough chop the onion and the celery; peel and rough chop the potatoes.  The cutting board we use has a tray (a little like a Tefal, only a bit larger), and basically a large, rough-chopped onion fills that tray; the celery should work out to roughly the same amount, and the potatoes should be about four times that amount.

Honestly, peeling the potatoes is the only pain in the ass part of the whole procedure.  I often make the other family members help with this part.  We also sometimes use an electric potato peeler, but it’s a bit fiddly, and it also seems to waste a bunch of the actual potato, so I’m not saying I’d actually recommend that.

Anyhow, parallel to that, melt the ghee in the pot.  You can peel and chop everything first, and then do the ghee, but what I like to do is start with this step: turn the heat on just long enough to melt the ghee, then turn it off again while I chop everything.  That way I can just dump everything straight into the pot.  The ghee should be enough to cover the bottom of the pot with a slightly thick layer.

The veggies, salt, and pepper all go into the pot, and you’re going to cook it, covered, at medium to medium-high heat, for about 5 minutes.  Stir it every now and again to keep it from burning on the bottom, or, if you have a tightly fitting lid, just do what I do: hold the lid on and just shake it up and down a bit every minute-and-a-half or so.  We’re basically just trying to give the veggies a head start and sort of pre-soften them up a bit.

Once your 5-minute timer goes off, pour in your milk and chicken broth.  Now add the thyme and the garlic powder.  I never bother measuring it; I just use a system very similar to what I do for spaghetti and meatballs: cover the surface with with a thin layer of thyme (that’s a “large amount”), then add anywhere from ¼ to ½ as much of that amount of garlic powder, depending on how much you love garlic (that’s the “small amount”).  Stir it up, cover the pot, crank up the heat, and bring it to a boil.  Now lower the heat and simmer it for about 15 minutes, stirring perhaps every 5 minutes or so.

When that time goes off, turn off the heat entirely (trust me, it’ll be plenty hot) and hit it with the stick blender.  I like to move the blender up and down a bit to get everything really really smooth, but I also like to be a little haphazard so that every once in a while you get a surprise chunk in your bowl.  Once you’ve got the consistency like you want it, gradually stir in the shredded cheese.  In our house we favor a 3-cheese blend that we refer to as “pizza cheese” (because it’s great on pizza, natch): it’s always cheddar, mozzarella, and one other white cheese (if you’re using the Trader Joe’s version, that’s Monterey Jack; other versions may substitute provolone).  But you can use a Mexican cheese blend, or straight cheddar, or whatever floats your boat.  Just stir it in bit by bit until it essentially disappears: you’ll never see it in the soup, but it adds another layer of creaminess that’s tough to beat.  I like about two handsful in mine, but adjust to taste.  Or sprinkle a bit more on your bowl when serving.  Or both.

And that’s it!  Ladle it up and enjoy.  But be careful: it’s hot.  (Our youngest always puts a big bowlful in the freezer for a couple of minutes so she doesn’t burn her tongue.)  But, honestly, it’s so good I usually don’t mind burning my tongue a bit.  On a cold winter day, it’s the perfect warm-you-up meal, and it’s full of those comfort food vibes that warm your soul as well.  Tough to beat.

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1 Note: I don’t know for sure that my grandmother’s ancestors came over with the Virginia colonists, but I can say that all the ancestors I was able to trace were never more than 100 miles away from that landing spot.

2 The only “fast food” place I would eat ungravied mashed potatoes from is Boston Market.

3 This is less of a gluten thing than a general carb thing, at least for me.

4 Except for our picky middle child, who won’t eat much of anything that we cook.