Cooking Light Baked Potato Soup

Last week I mentioned that I'd have a delicious, hearty winter soup recipe for you. Well, I'm back and here it is! I made this baked potato soup a couple weeks ago on a cooooold weekday night, and it really hit the spot. I was inspired to make this recipe by my latest magazine issue of Cooking Light, which had a recipe for a "cheesy potato soup" in it. However, when I looked up reviews of that particular recipe online, the reviews were only mediocre. So I looked around for other potato soup options (I was really craving a potato soup for some reason and couldn't get the idea of making one out of my head!) and luckily stumbled upon this one that I ended up trying and loving.

The original recipe makes enough for 8 servings. I halved the recipe (more or less, it was probably more like I "5/8'd" the recipe ;)). So when I made this I had 4 or 5 servings. I have written the original recipe below for 8 servings. Feel free to alter it as you wish!

Ingredients:

-4 baking potatoes (about 2 and 1/2 lbs.)

-2/3 cup all-purpose flour

-6 cups 2% milk (I used 1%)

-1 cup reduced-fat shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese, divided

-1 tsp. salt

-1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

-1 cup reduced fat sour cream

-3/4 cup chopped green onions, divided

-6 bacon slices, cooked and crumbled

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pierce potatoes with a fork and bake at 400 for 1 hour or until tender. Cool. Peel potatoes and coarsely mash.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Place flour in a large Dutch oven (or just a large, deep saucepan - whatever you have!); gradually add milk, stirring with a whisk until blended. Cook over medium heat until thick and bubbly (about 8 minutes). Add mashed potatoes, 3/4 cup of the cheese, salt, and 1/2 tsp. pepper, stirring until cheese melts. Remove from heat.

Stir in sour cream and 1/2 cup onions. Cook over low heat 10 minutes or until thoroughly heated (do not boil). Ladle 1 and 1/2 cups soup into each bowl. Sprinkle each serving with desired amount of cheese, onions, and bacon (the recipe says 1 and 1/2 tsp. cheese, 1 and 1/2 tsp. onion, and 1 Tbsp. bacon). Garnish with cracked pepper, if desired.

I used this Whole Foods brand of reduced sodium bacon. Use whatever your favorite kind is! Also, of note, I only added 1/4 tsp. of salt to the recipe. For 8 servings, the recipe calls for 1 tsp. of salt, which seemed like a lot to me, and halving the recipe means I should have added 1/2 tsp. salt, which still seemed like a lot. With soups, I tend to be conservative when it comes to adding salt to the actual recipe. I think it's better just to let each person who's eating the soup to add their own salt, if they want, to their individual bowl! :)

Mike and I enjoyed this soup with some toasted Whole Foods ciabatta bread. Simple and delicious.

Mmmmm, extra sharp cheddar. It makes everything better!

I really really liked this soup. It was slightly time-consuming to make, thanks to the need to bake the potatoes and cook the bacon. All in all though, it was not difficult and was totally worth any time and effort you put in to make it. And cream/milk based soups tend not to freeze very well, which is one reason I chose not to make the full recipe....if I had made the soup and had a lot leftover, I would have felt the need to either eat most of it within a few days or freeze the rest, and I didn't really want to do either. Also, I didn't want to use up 6 cups of milk for one soup! That's about all I had in my fridge when I made this recipe, so it was a better choice for me to halve the recipe and still have milk in the fridge for other uses.

And on a completely different note, isn't this a gorgeous sunset? This was a pic I took outside my apartment last week. Love those beautiful colors!!

And on yet another note, my cookie recipe won the Whole Foods pecan recipe contest!! Woohoo! I found out on Friday the 13th (my lucky day!) and was totally psyched. I'm planning another blog post about that, so please stay tuned! Thanks so much for your votes and support! :)

Crock Pot Apple Cider Beef Stew

Last weekend I went wedding dress shopping all day on Saturday with my mom, sister, and future mother-in-law. What a wonderful day! And yes, I found a dress. ;) Why am I telling you this? Well, since I knew we were going to be gone all day, I thought it would be the perfect day to have dinner slowly cooking in the crock pot all day so that we could have a yummy meal waiting for us when we got home (and so that the house would smell delicious too!). I figured we'd be much too tired from dress shopping to cook. And I was right; wedding dress shopping is exhausting! But it's also super fun. :-D

I found this recipe for Apple Cider Beef Stew in one of my cookbooks specifically dedicated to slow cooker recipes. Now that the weather is getting colder, I've been thinking about using my crock pot much more often but just hadn't gotten around to it yet. I'm glad I finally did use it with this recipe! It was a great recipe to start off crock pot "season."

Ingredients:

-2 lbs. stew beef

-8 large carrots

-6 medium potatoes (I used red potatoes)

-2 apples (you can use whatever kind you have on hand! I think I used Macintosh)

-1 small onion (I used a yellow onion)

-salt, pepper

-thyme and other herbs you like (I also added herbs de provence)

-2 cups apple cider

Instructions:

Cut the beef into 1/2-inch cubes. Peel and slice the carrots and potatoes (I cut mine into about 1/2-inch pieces - and I actually did not peel my red potatoes). Also cut the apples into 1/2-inch pieces. I left the skins on the apples but you could peel them if you wanted. Finely chop the onion.

Place the carrots, potatoes, and apples in the crock pot. Add the beef, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, thyme, and onions. Pour the cider over top. Cover and cook on low setting for 10 - 12 hours. Makes approximately 8 - 10 servings.

Serve hot and enjoy!

I didn't list an amount for the spices/herbs because I think you can just eyeball how much you add. My guess is that I added about 3 teaspoons total of the various dried herbs and maybe about 1/4 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. pepper? Sorry - I didn't measure!

Along with our yummy stew, I served some deeelicious bread from When Pigs Fly, one of my favorite bread bakeries. This particular bread was their baby spinach, onion, and garlic ciabatta. Sooo flavorful! I am lovin' that there's a When Pigs Fly in the town where I live, but my wallet and waistline aren't as happy about it. ;)

Back to the stew... This was a very tasty, hearty, comforting dish - just what you want when it comes to beef stew! The apple cider was detectable and added a unique flavor. And the apples added a bit more nutrition too! All in all, this dish was a winner.

Yay for crock pot cooking!

Mashed Root Vegetables (Potato, Rutabaga, Parsnip) with Rosemary

Hello hello! Sorry it's been several days between posts. Whoops! This is a tasty side dish recipe that involves very yummy, healthy root veggies that are abundant this time of year. During our last week of our CSA at the end of October, we got a rutabaga! My first ever :) I was debating what to do with it and decided it might be fun to mash it! So I did. I combined it with a parsnip and a couple potatoes...all from our CSA. I kind of just flew by the seat of my pants with this recipe, so the approximate measurements are listed below for you. I feel like this is the kind of recipe that you can make to your own taste, adding a bit more butter or milk (or whatever!) to your liking.

Ingredients:

-1 parsnip

-2 small potatoes

-1 rutabaga

-2 or so Tbsp. of butter

-salt and pepper to taste

-1/4 to 1/2 cup milk (I used 1%)

-a few sprigs of fresh rosemary

Instructions:

Peel veggies and cut into small cubes/chunks. I probably ended up with 2.5 to 3 cups of veggies (I actually only used about 2/3 of the rutabaga). Place root veggies in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil; reduce heat, cover and cook for 15 - 20 minutes or until tender. Drain and return veggies to a large bowl. Add the butter, milk, salt, and pepper. Beat until light and fluffy, or mash with a masher or fork. Stir in fresh rosemary (or other herbs of your choice!).

I'm sorry I didn't take any more appetizing photos. I forgot to take any more than just these! I didn't feel like using an electric mixer to beat the root veggies, and I don't have a masher...so I just used an old-fashioned fork. That led to some lumps in mine, but I didn't mind. I actually liked the texture. ;-) I am not actually sure if I've ever had rutabaga before now! I did like it, and I'd definitely make this dish again. I roasted the remaining 1/3 of the rutabaga that I didn't put in this dish. That was tasty too!

Lesson learned here = I ♥ rutabaga. :)

Overnight Egg Casserole

TGIF and welcome back to the Barbershop. :) Hope everyone had a great week! This week I shared with you a main dish recipe for healthy butternut squash mac n' cheese and a dessert recipe for black bottom banana cream pie...and now I think I'd like to share a breakfast recipe with you! Gotta cover all the bases. ;-)

As you know from my last post, my family was in town last weekend and I did some cooking for everyone, including brunch on Sunday morning. I had planned to have several items on the brunch menu, and I wanted one of the items to include eggs. So I searched around for an easy recipe that wouldn't take too much of my time (I wanted most of my time to be spent with the fam!), was fairly healthy, and of course, delicious! I settled upon this overnight egg casserole from Taste of Home. Luckily, it was a success!

Now, as I typically do, I adapted the recipe a bit and did not follow it exactly. As you can see by reading the recipe here, the recipe calls for ham. Well, I was already going to cook sausage with brunch, so I decided to make this dish meatless and therefore omitted the ham. Also, I did not add the chiles that are in the original recipe. I added a few new ingredients as well, as you'll see as you continue to read...

The original recipe says it makes nine servings, and although that would have been enough for us (there were six of us), I decided to increase the proportions just a bit for a few ingredients. This casserole is made in layers. I kept the bottom layer as is, by layering hash browns on the bottom of the pan. I used a 13 x 9 glass baking pan.

I sprinkled some pepper and herbs de provence on the potatoes for a little extra flavor! I added about 4 or 4.5 cups of potatoes here.

Next up comes the shredded cheese. I decided to use a combination of a mexican blend and Vermont sharp cheddar. About 1 cup total of shredded cheese (maybe slightly more than 1 cup) was sprinkled on top of the potatoes.

The next step is to combine the eggs and evaporated milk. Although the recipe calls for 6 eggs, I used 8. I still used the 12 oz. can of evaporated milk called for in the recipe though; I did not increase the amount of milk.

Now, a few ingredients I chose to add that weren't in the recipe were red pepper, green pepper, and onion! I wanted to add some healthy veggies AND some bright color. :) Mike chopped the veggies for me; thanks, Mike!! In total, we added about 1 cup of finely chopped red and green pepper and 1/2 of a yellow onion, finely chopped. These veggies got mixed in with the egg and milk mixture, as did some black pepper and more herbs de provence.

The only thing left to do was pour the egg mixture overtop the potatoes and let the whole thing sit overnight in the fridge! That's all, folks. Super simple.

The next morning I took the casserole out early so that it could sit for at least 30 minutes before baking. After baking it, uncovered, at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, it was done! The recipe says to bake it for one hour or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean; my oven tends to cook faster, so for me, it was done after just 45 minutes.

How colorful! I love it.

I decided to add a little salsa to my helping - yummm! It gave the egg casserole just the right kick. ;-) 

Overall, this dish was great and I would definitely make it again. My only concern was that the bottom hash brown layer was a tad dry, but not everyone who ate it thought so. So maybe that was just my own preferences talking! Maybe next time, if I made it again with 8 eggs rather than 6, I'd also increase the amount of evaporated milk. 

A couple additional items on our brunch menu were other tasty Barbershop recipes, including healthy carrot muffins and Irish soda bread scones. I'm getting hungry for brunch again as I type this. Uh oh!

:)

Enjoy the weekend, friends!