Monday, October 24, 2011

This a recipe for roasted garlic.  I do about 4 heads at one time and freeze them for later use.
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/roasted_garlic/

Cream of roasted garlic and potato bacon soup
There are many variations of this recipe.  Feel free to try your own.

2 large cloves of roasted garlic
1 small onion
6 large potatoes
1/3 package of bacon
2 cups of chicken stock

Chop bacon thinly and fry in a non-stick fry pan
Add diced onion. Cook until onion is becoming translucent.
Peel and dice potatoes.  Add to fry pan and cook everything until it is all getting caramelized.  It takes at least 10 mins on medium heat.  Add heaping tbsp of flour and stir well so it mixes with fat from bacon.
At this point I put mine In a crockpot.
Add 2 cups of chicken stock and 2 cups of water. Add 2 roasted garlic cloves or more if you LOVE garlic.
cook on high for 4 hours or low for 7 hours.
In a pot simmer for 1 hour.
I scoop out the chucks and puree in blender, making sure I got the roasted garlic chucks.  Then I put back in pot.  I like to do this to keep some of the soup chunky. If you want real creamy and you have a hand blender it works really well for this.
From here you can change the spices.  I use parsley and salt and pepper.  Also 1/2 tsp of italian seasoning.  Today for cream I will use a sour cream and milk mix but you can use evaporated milk or real cream, and even top with cheese!
This is the basic recipe.  You can try adding cayenne pepper for a kick, or hiding more veggies in it like celery, cauliflower or even carrot.  Since it is pureed no one will even know.  This soup is freezes well but i would try to freeze it with out the cream and added that part once it is thawed and reheated.