Loaded Bacon-Potato Soup (Unlocked)

now with cornbread

Originally published for paying subscribers February 20, 2022. Unlocked now with the addition of a recipe for cornbread!

It got cold in North Carolina. Like, really, really, cold.

Our last couple of years there, my dad would spend some time in Colorado and some time in North Carolina as he was starting a new job in Colorado. He would come home to North Carolina during the winter and talk about how cold it was.

Isn’t it colder in Colorado? we’d ask. Well, yeah, he’d reply. But it doesn’t get into your bones like it does here.

The humidity killed in Carolina. In the summer, my mom would say that walking outside felt like being licked by a yak — your entire face would be wet in seconds. In the winter time, it felt like the moisture seeped through your clothes and skin and settled in droplets of ice on your bones themselves.

My dad’s first puff jacket, bought in the 80s and still proudly worn to this day, is about six-inches thick with insulation and is dyed a deep, rust color. We affectionately refer to it as “Rusty.” It has become the most fought over item of clothing in our house. My mom and I quickly discovered that, when worn under our down-lined overalls, it created a perfect warmth-seal for trekking out to the barn.

I remember going out to check on the horses in North Carolina and thinking they seemed taller than they had last time I saw them. I looked down at their hooves and saw that they were walking on ice-stilts. Blocks of snow, several inches thick, would glue themselves into the bottoms of the horses feet, and the only way to get them off was to hack at them (carefully) with a metal paint scraper. After that first snow on the farm, we asked our neighbor how she kept the snow from piling up in her horses’ hooves.

“Cooking oil,” she said simply. From then on, any time it was supposed to snow, we’d go out and rub cooking oil all over the bottom of our horses hooves. And, sure enough, it kept the snow out.

When we came inside from the barn, the first thing I would do was drag the great, stuffed chair over to the wood stove. It was a soapstone stove, a light blueish-gray in color, and it distributed the heat more evenly throughout the house than a regular iron stove. Good thing, too, because that was the only thing we ever used for heat. My mom kept it running almost constantly on wood from blown-down trees all around the neighborhood. Before we went to sleep, she’d add another log, and as soon as she got up in the morning, even before pressing ‘start’ on the coffee maker, she stoked the wood stove.

All winter long, I’d drag that big chair right up to the edge of the wood stove and do my school work in it. My mom got me a lap desk for this exact purpose, and I’d sit under a big blanket, the dogs clustered around the stove on their blankets with me. I would do my math, struggle through chemistry, and read book after book after book.

My favorite thing to eat, lunch or dinner, in that chair was my mom’s potato soup. The chill in my bones was no match for the heavy heat of that soup. Lunch breaks in our “school lunch program,” as my mom referred to it, often included this soup with a half hour to an hour (depending on how far I’d gotten for the day) for “I Love Lucy” reruns or an episode of “Gilmore Girls.”

Every year, around the first snow, I can taste the smooth, earthy flavor of the potatoes topped with crumbled bacon. It’s usually one of the first things I make when fall sighs away slowly into winter.

I hope you find it as warm and comforting as I do and that you eat it under a blanket with at least one dog curled up next to you.

Loaded Bacon-Potato Soup

You will need:

4 slices bacon, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

4 russet potatoes, peeled and cubed

3 cups veggie broth

3 cups milk (I use coconut milk)

1 cup grated Colby Jack cheese

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh chives

Salt

Pepper

What to do:

In a large pot over medium heat, cook the bacon (make sure to stir) until it’s crisp (12-14 minutes). Transfer to a plate. Pour out all but 2 Tablespoons of the fat out of the pot.

Add the onion and garlic to the pot with the bacon fat. Cook until softened (6-8 minutes).

Add the potatoes, broth, milk, a pinch of salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring, until the potatoes are soft (about 40 minutes). The soup should thicken slightly. Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until it’s smooth. Serve with cheese, chives, and bacon.

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My mom has the best cornbread recipe in the world, and you cannot convince me otherwise. I hope you enjoy it with the Loaded Bacon-Potato Soup for a flavorful, filling, and comforting meal!

Cornbread

You will need:

1 cup almond milk

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 large egg

1 1/4 cup yellow cornmeal

1 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup frozen corn, defrosted and drained

1 small can chopped green chiles

What to do:

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Next, beat the milk, butter, and egg in a large mixing bowl with a fork or a whisk. Stir in the rest of the ingredients until the mixture is evenly moistened into a lumpy dough. Pour into a greased 8x8 pan (or you can use my favorite kind of baking dish — a stone pie dish!) Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and the center is set.

That’s all for this week! Thanks, as always for reading. Tune in next time for a recipe for start to finish chocolate (that’s right — from roasting beans to delightful chocolate delight!) If you know anyone who would like this post (or Food & Fodder in general!) please share!

Thanks,

Juliana

PS —

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