When I was a kid, my favorite dinner was fresh baked bread and potato soup. It’s still my go to comfort food choice for when I’m feeling down or just needing a taste of home. When my mom was going into her last surgery, the family was gathered at the house and my sisters made potato soup for our shared meal. To me, the soup means home. I’ve adjusted Mom’s recipe, adding spicy sausage and red pepper to the mix to make it more of a meal to appease my husband.
I hope you enjoy.
Chop one onion and mince a clove or two of garlic. Brown this in a large heavy stockpot with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Crumble a pound or so of a fresh sausage into the pan. I like the spicy Italian sausage my grocer makes for this. Sprinkle in a teaspoon of red pepper flakes.
Cook until the meat is done but not over cooked and dry. Then set the mixture aside in a colander, draining out the fat from the olive oil as well as the sausage.
Pour a box of chicken stock into the empty stock pan. Don’t worry that there might be bits and pieces from the sausage mixture still in the pan.
Peel 4-6 large russet potatoes, chopping into small pieces. Add these to the stockpot along with two stalks of celery chopped into small slices. Add the leaves and chopped stalks into the pot. Add enough water to cover the potatoes, add in salt (I like a lot of salt, so I’d say at least a teaspoon here, but this can be adjusted up or down for your own salt liking) and pepper and let the mixture boil for thirty minutes, checking the water level at different times. You don’t want this to dry out and burn. When the potatoes are soft, mash up some of the potatoes. Not all of the pot. You can also do this by inserting an immersion blender, but it seems a bit fancy for the recipe.
Add back in the drained meat mixture, a cup of heavy cream, and enough milk to make the soup appear creamy.
Then in a separate bowl, add a ½ cup of flour, and generous sprinklings (or dashes) of salt, pepper, garlic salt, seasonal salt to the dry mixture. Then crack an egg in the middle. Mix together in the bowl, then drop by spoonful into the soup. If there are left over crumbling’s, add those as well as the flour/egg mixture will thicken your soup.
Put a lid on the soup, heat until the egg dumplings are cooked through, and serve.
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