Ham and Potato Soup

This recipe says that it serves 8. (It served 3 at my house, so I always double it).

3 1/2 cups peeled and diced potatoes
1/3 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup chopped onion
3/4 cup diced cooked ham
3 1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp. chicken bouillon granules (6 cubes)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper ( I use less—about half )
5 Tbsp. butter
5 Tbsp. flour
2 cups milk

Combine potatoes, celery, onion and ham with water in stockpot. Bring to boil, then cook over medium heat until potatoes are tender (10-15 mins).
Stir in bouillon and salt and pepper.

In separate saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour with fork and cook stirring constantly until thick (1 min). Slowly stir in milk...continue stirring (med low heat)
until thick (4-5 min).

Stir the milk mixture into the stockpot and cook soup until heated through. Serve with cheese ( I throw in Velveeta during the last few minutes!)


Gluten and Dairy Free Recipe

I use cornstarch instead of flour and rice milk instead of milk.

My mom always gives us a Costco spiral cut ham at Christmas, there's just two of us so quite a bit ends up frozen. Knowing that we won't get through all of it, I take off an inch or so off the sliced part and freeze it to start. Then the middle gets eaten. The end part gets chopped up for soup. The pieces for soup I chop first and then squeeze out the air in a freezer bag. I'll freeze the bone until I'm ready to make the soup too, usually just toss it in a gallon sized freezer bag and roll up. Then when I'm ready, I buy the bag of 15 bean (or 12 or whatever it is) soup mix and basically follow the directions, or at least the directions of the brand I used back then, it's slightly different now.

I freeze the ham bone and any ham that was not cut away in a ziplock freezer bag. In fact, I just pulled a ham bone out to make a split pea soup tomorrow. I like Emeril Lagasse’s recipe.

If you cook up the ham bone to make broth, you can use some of the broth in each bag of meat. That way the broth will provide moisture to protect the ham from drying out.

There isn't much to freeze now. I made a friend scalloped potatoes and ham - heavy on the ham. I think I will make a batch of bean soup with half of the remainder and freeze enough for split pea soup.

We freeze ham bones and ham scraps (not off plates!) for cooking in beans or peas. It reconstitutes the ham, which tastes fine, and flavors the beans. Yummy.