UnPotato Soup
As I mentioned in the Ham and Mac-and-Cheese post, I baked a ham last weekend. We've been living off it all week, a great demonstration of how cooked meat in the refrigerator is super low-carb convenience food. Finally today I was down to a good meaty bone. Coincidentally, the weather was absolutely foul here in Southern Indiana, cold and rainy and bleak. What more reason could a girl need for making a pot of soup? I didn't measure, but here's what I did:
First I put the meaty ham bone in my big soup kettle, just covered with water. (If you don't have a meaty ham bone on hand, you could always buy some smoked hocks or shanks.) Let it simmer on a low burner for a few hours while I did some other stuff. Then I fished out the ham bone and put it on a plate, to hold for later.
My onions, in a charming display of the hope of all earth's things for the coming of spring, were sprouting. so I took the middles of a couple of them -- they go soft from the outside in, so the centers are still fine -- and diced them up. Call it one biggish onion, if your onions aren't trying to grow. I diced two big ribs of celery, and shredded a couple of smallish carrots. Threw all the vegetables in the ham water, along with a couple of crushed cloves of garlic. Dumped in three 1-pound bags of frozen cauliflower, threw in a couple of bay leaves, put a lid on the pot, and brought it back to a simmer. Let it cook for another hour, again, while I did other stuff.
When the cauliflower was soft, I picked out the bay leaves, then used my stick blender to puree all the vegetables right there in the pot. I also added about 1/2 cup of Ketatoes mix -- enough to thicken up my soup. Yes, I still have Ketatoes! I bought out CarbSmart's stock when the Keto company went out of business, and heaven knows they don't go bad. Yes, I know you can't get Ketatoes. You can, however, get Dixie Diner's Instant Mashers, which work the same in recipes.
My soup being thickened up, I picked the meat off my ham bone, and used my kitchen shears to snip it straight into the pot. I added at least a tablespoon of Better than Bouillon Ham Base, several dashes of Worcestershire, about a teaspoon of paprika, and a few good dashes of Frank's Hot Sauce -- Tabasco would work fine, too. Then salt and pepper to taste, let it simmer for another ten minutes to blend flavors, then served it up.
It was thick and flavorful and warming, and we liked it very much. There's lots leftover, too, which is good, because it's supposed to rain all weekend and beyond. :-/
