Dutch Potato Soup
My daughter made a delicious prime rib roast for Christmas Dinner and I brought home one of the rib bones. I had soup on my mind!
I first made this soup many years ago for our Christmas Eve extended family gathering. Soup and sandwiches were on the menu and I was already making creamy Oyster Stew for my daddy, so I wanted something with a hearty brown broth. The recipe was in a commercial cooking textbook I had, but I've changed it over the years.
It is important to note that you can start the soup with any roasted beef scraps. I used this beautiful bone that still had plenty of meat on it. Roasted is the key because it adds important flavor. The other ingredients you need are sliced potatoes, onion, celery and caraway seeds, onion and garlic powder.
Begin the process by gently reheating the rib bone (with plenty of meat and a little fat still attached) in a soup pot. If you are using left over pot roast or if your bone doesn't have enough fat on it, you might need to add some olive oil to the pot.
Peel and slice 6 potatoes. Add just a handful of the slices to your pot and fry the potatoes. Add a sprinkle of the onion and garlic powders to the potatoes. Add a quarter of an onion, sliced, to the pot. After the potatoes and onions have browned, add the rest of the potatoes to the pot. Frying these ingredients adds a wonderful sweet and nutty caramelization flavor to the soup. It is an important step.
Add 6 cups of water to the pot; add a rib of celery chopped; salt and pepper and 1 teaspoon of caraway seed. I add a sliced turnip to my soup, and if you feed turnip haters, they will never know it is in this big pot! Let the soup simmer for an hour. Test the flavor of the broth and if you need to add beef base or mushroom base, add it. I also like to add a handful of fresh or dried mushrooms in the last ten minutes of cooking. I add them at the end so they don't cook away. You can see three stages of cooking in this photo.
If I were serving this soup as a dinner party course, I'd probably garnish the bowl with a drop of sour cream and a sprinkle of fresh parsley or chopped chives. It is heavy enough to be a nice meal in itself, though and for Saturday is Soup Day, it usually goes right from the pot to a bowl and to the couch in front of the television!
Hope you try it. Do it your way and make your own version. I'll be sharing with a couple blog parties, so make sure you click through and visit those sites, too.
