Baked Potato Soup

My LOVE for baked potato soup started about 20 years ago when I was an intern in my 1st school back in when I was in college.  My supervising teacher decided to make baked potato soup in a crock pot and bring it for a few of us for lunch one day.  It was the BEST potato soup I've ever had and still cant' quite seem to replicate it exactly!  I also want to start this by saying that I am NOT a soup person.  I'm not one of those people that makes or buys soup regularly, but there are 2 kinds of soup that I can't resist, but ONLY when they're REALLY, REALLY good!  The first is a tomato soup!  I LOVE the tomato soup at "The Smith" restaurants in NYC (check my nyc blog for more) and the one that they make here at Panera is good too! The only other soup I ever buy is potato, but it is VERY rare because most places make it with bacon or ham :(  Even the recipe that I have here from Pinterest calls for bacon.  Whenever a recipe calls for bacon, I just use some chicken stock instead.  This is one of the best recipes I've found for baked potato soup.....so here it is:

http://www.centercutcook.com/ultimate-loaded-baked-potato-soup/
I find that this recipe makes a REALLY large amount of soup, so I always half it and there's still plenty.  I also like to add a little garlic and onion powder to the soup along with a bouillon cube to give it a little extra flavor!  Now, this may be because I don't have the bacon, so those of you using bacon, may want to try the recipe as is before adding these things!

Here's how my soup turned out!

Shepherd's Pie!

I know many people make Shepherd's Pie in tons of different ways, but here's the method I've adopted!

Whenever I make ground beef, I always make a lot and usually freeze some of it to save for a quick and easy meal.  I make my ground beef the way my mom makes it (sort of like a sloppy joe).  We grate an onion in a pot, add the ground beef to it, season it with some salt, pepper, and cumin (and a sprinkle of allspice), add a little chicken bouillon cube to it, and then add a whole can of crushed tomatoes to the mix.  I stir that up and let it simmer for a while and add a can of tomato paste and sometimes a little brown sugar.  I let that simmer again for another 15 minutes or so and then use this ground beef mix for a few different recipes!  I use it in my Macarona bel Bechamel (see previous post), put it over some spaghetti, eat it with some pita bread, and use it in my Shepherd's Pie!

I make my Shepherd's pie by boiling some potatoes and then peeling them and mashing them.  I add a stick of butter, some milk, salt, and pepper and mash them all together to get a mashed potato mix.  I use half of the mix for the bottom of my pan, spread a little cheddar cheese over it, add a layer of frozen mixed veggies, a layer of the ground beef above, and then top it off with the remainder of the mashed potato mix.  I use a fork to mar the top and then top it with a little more cheddar cheese and pop it in the oven for about a half an hour.

We buy an AMAZING white cheddar from Costco that our family just LOVES. It's the Kerrigold Dubliner Cheddar (for Caribbean folks - it tastes just as good as the New Zealand cheddar you may get back home!!!).  My daughter LOVES this cheese and we love to eat it with some Crix as a midnight snack :)

Here's the Sheperd's Pie:

Completed pie!

This is what the pie looked like out of the oven!

I like to broil the top a little before taking it out of the oven

Here's the cheese!!!

Top layer forked

Spreading the top layer over the ground beef

Adding the frozen mixed veggies

Layer of shredded cheddar

Mashing the potatoes