Ham and potato soup

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purple.alien.giraffe

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This soup isn't difficult but does take some prior preparation (day/night before). The very first thing you need to do is prepare the ham stock. To do this, you'll need a good size ham with a large bone in it (shank ham is what I used) and some of the skin and fat still on it.

Bake the ham until done. I just used the directions on the ham packaging and that worked well. Make sure to catch and save any drippings and deglaze the roasting pan afterward. Remove the ham from the bone, and the skin and outer fat from the ham. You can store and use the ham for whatever, you don't need it for the soup.

Boil the ham bone, skin and fat, covered, for about an hour and a half to two hours. Strain out the bone, skin and fat and discard. Add the pan drippings. Slice up four or five garlic cloves and add them. Cover the pan and store over-night in the fridge.

The rest of the ingredients

2 - 3 small to medium yellow onions, chopped
4 stalks celery, chopped
1 green pepper, diced
8 small to medium sized russet potatoes, pealed and cubed
4 small to medium size golden potatoes

Take the stock out of the fridge and skim the fat off the top. Bring stock to a low boil. Add all ingredients except the golden potatoes. Bring back to a low boil and cover. Stir periodically kind of squishing the potato chunks against the sides of the pan as you do. When the chunks of potato squish easily, add the golden potatoes.

Continue cooking the soup, stiring and squishing the potatoes. Cook until the golden potatoes are done. You won't need to thicken the soup, the starch from the potato does that pretty well.

Serve with a nice chewy bread.
 
Thanks for the reminder! I've got a couple smoked ham hocks in the freezer. Probably use one for potato soup and the other for red beans and rice. Can't forget the bacon for the soup either.:yum:
 
CraigC said:
Thanks for the reminder! I've got a couple smoked ham hocks in the freezer. Probably use one for potato soup and the other for red beans and rice. Can't forget the bacon for the soup either.:yum:

That sounds like a great idea.

I forgot to mention in the original post that the reason the soup came out so good this time was because I didn't actually have a lot of pan drippings. What a did have is some dark, just under burnt, brownings (don't know the technical term) in the pan. I added water to get all of it up and it was very strong. Made a huge difference in the flavor of the stock. So if you do have a lot of drippings, maybe poor some off and stick the roasting pan back in the oven without the ham in it and uncovered, then let the liquid all evaporate away.
 

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