Homemade Potato Soup - Helping Hands

Homemade potato soup is a favorite winter meal. Since we have a lot of potatoes, it’s a cheap way to feed our large family. Food seems to disappear as fast as we can make it; so many helping hands are needed to keep food on the table. We enjoy eating our soup with homemade rolls.

Our family loves it when Sandra Sorensen shares her cooking expertise with us. This is basically Sandra’s recipe with a few of our modifications. She doesn’t really use a recipe, but these are her instructions.

We frequently make soup on Sunday because we want it to actually be a day of rest. One pot of soup will feed the family lunch and dinner. We make our soup in a big 12-quart stockpot. You might need to down size this recipe.

Ingredients:

• Lots of Potatoes
• 5-6 stalks Celery
• 3-4 Onions
• 1 pint cream
• 3 pints milk
• 1 cube butter
• 1 cup white flour
• 1/4 –1/3 cup chicken bullion
• salt and pepper to taste

Jonathan and Joseph start peeling potatoes while Rachel helps Dad make rolls.

Marianne helps Mom cut the potatoes into bite size pieces. All the pieces aren’t proportionate, but that’s OK. We fill the pot two-thirds to three-fourths full. It takes quite a while to peel and cut that many potatoes, so some of the potatoes start to get a little orange. Rinsing the cut potatoes a couple times in cold water will turn them white again.

We fill the pot with just enough water so that it barely covers the potatoes. With the lid on the pot, we turn the heat on high. While waiting for the water to boil, the children help cut the onions and celery.

After chopping the onions and dicing the celery, we add the vegetables to pot of potatoes.

We usually cut up the rest of the celery and put it in the freezer to use the next time we make potato soup.

I add a heaping spoonful of chicken bullion, 2 tablespoons of salt, and a teaspoon of pepper at this point. When the soup is finished, I add more salt until it tastes right.

While the vegetables are boiling April usually makes the white sauce, she’s our expert. Here’s how to make the white sauce. Melt 1 cube of butter, turn off the heat, and stir in 1 cup of flour. It is kind of thick so we blend it with some milk in the Magic Bullet.

After the vegetables are soft, we add the white sauce, cream, and milk. (Don’t drain the water off the vegetables) The soup needs to boil for another 5-10 minutes or until it begins to thicken. It needs to be stirred continually at this point so that the milk doesn’t scorch. We turn off the soup and put the lid back on the pot. The soup will thicken a little more after turning off the heat.

Most of the children like helping in the kitchen. Emma likes to be held all of the time, and April was happy to hold her while others worked with Mom and Dad.

This is the first meal I helped with after having Emma. I still looked about six or seven months pregnant. Jared looked at me and said, “You don’t look pregnant anymore; you just look fat.” We both laughed knowing he spoke the truth. I guess it will take a couple weeks to loose my big belly.