Jan 03, 2011
I made a few adjustments so that I could cook this soup mostly in my crockpot. I doubled the recipe and threw the potatoes in the crockpot with the organic chicken broth, and additonal sauteed onion/few cloves of minced garlic and a few spices. I cooked that on high for an hour, then low for the rest of the day. Before adding everything else, I lightly mashed the potatoes with the broth with a potato masher, then added the bacon, the sauteed leeks, onion, celery and also some minced garlic, carrot and diced bell peppers. I steamed the broccoli on the side in additional organic broth so that the broccoli would not get mushy and I folded that in with just a bit of the milk called for, to cut down on the fat (I also used fat free evaporated milk). I thought at the last minute that using the last cup or so of leftover Christmas ham would be a good addition as well. I don't care for herbes de provence so I just threw in what I thought would be good. I also didn't need that much pepper or salt. I just added until it tasted right. A good potato soup recipe is easily adaptable to whatever you want to add in, really. A doubled recipe made more than enough for at least a week's worth of lunches/dinners for me and will provide quite a few portioned out for the freezer. It was quite easy to adapt this for the crockpot, which I appreciated. This was an excellent way for me to use the surplus of potatoes, broccoli and ham that I had leftover in my fridge.
—Sarah Jo
