Bacon & Potato Chunky Cream

Third Autumn Soup 2011: Bacon-n-Potato Chunky Cream

As I said before, in my previous soup posts, I love soups, and in autumn AND WINTER I want to eat soup all day long =) Yesterday it was cold and I was craving for some potato cream. Lucky me, I had some potato soup leftovers, so I already had potato chunks and tomato broth for this delicious cream.

So now, let's go to business, you will need:

• 4 big potatoes (I suggest Russet potatoes, I L-O-V-E them)
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 bacon strips
• 1/2 cup water/chicken broth/tomato broth
• 1/2 tsp powdered garlic
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1/2 stick salted butter
• 1 tbsp EVOO
• 1 tbsp Knorr chicken broth bouillon

As I said before, I already had some chopped and cooked potatoes, so I cutted 3 potatoes in 12 partes each one and placed them to boil for at least 15 minutes. They will cook faster if the pieces are smaller, and as you are going to mash them, it doesn't matter if they are not whole.

  

The potatoes I already had cooked, I reserved them (you can still see some tomato pieces from the previous soup). If you are cooking all new potatoes, then when they are done, reserve one shopped potato for the potato chunks.

Cut 3 or 4 stripes of bacon in small stripes or squares... and reserve

Heat the EVOO and melt the butter in it (it will help the butter not to burn).

Add the bacon...

Fry it.... I like it crunchy

Remove from heat and reserve. You can save two or three tablespoons of greasy-bacon-melted butter-olive oil and use it later for chicken, onion, or whatever.... Reserve half the bacon with the potatoes you reserved previously -or you are about to reserve when the potatoes are fully cooked.

When the potatoes are fully cooked, place them in the blender (three of them, the other one, chop it and reserve with bacon chunks) along with milk, water (or tomato broth like I do), salt, pepper, white pepper, powdered garlic, Knorr's chicken croth bouillon....

If you are not in a hurry, I would recommend to cool for 5 or 10 minutes, because the heat of the potatoes and the blender's movement could create a big heat and crack the blender. For me, lucky one, my blender's cap has a special hole to allow heat to flow outside, without any food spills... 

Check the consistency of your cream after blending... is it too thick? Add more milk. Mine was too thick, so I added a tbsp of milk.

Then, heat again (if it coled) the bacon you removed from the heat and when it heats (do not let it boil) add the potato cream you just created in your blender. When the potato heats, you can begin stirring.

After stirring and creating a uniform mix, add the bacon and potato chunks and keep stirring, trying not to break them.

While the cream is heating, take some melting cheese (I used Carranco's Ranchero, you can use asadero, chihuahua, Monterey Jack, Cheddar, or any combination) and chop big squeares.

Add them to the serving plates you wil be using (I used a big cup -love them, my husband prefers a deep plate)

Add the potato cream. I also sprinkled some grated cheese (I already buy it like this, its a blend of 5 different cheeses), just a little bit more for garnish than as an ingredient.

My cup

His plate

Doesn't this look delicious? Do you have any suggestions? I thought about maybe adding some chorizo? But maybe instead of bacon... what do you think?

Check out the recipe at Tasty Kitchen.