"Coldest April on record" soup

Or "Any excuse to eat cheese and potatoes" soup

But really, what I want to say is Best. Soup. Ever.

I mean it.

I thought I would be done with this kind of food by now until at least November, but no, we are sticking with comfort food for a while longer. There has been frost this week - see above for a photo I took on Thursday morning, and the north wind has been icy. On writing days, when I try not to put the heating on I huddle at the kitchen table, all writer-in-garret chic with my fingerless gloves, scarf, and wraps across lap and shoulders. There are endless mugs of tea and if I could dictate accurately I would be permanently cupping the mugs of tea in my hands for warmth. Then I give in and put the heating on.

Today’s recipe is nodding to the weather but is also because I have seen a few mentions of it floating around recently and I started to crave it. Baked Potato Soup. What an idea. A proper baked potato is one of the best comfort foods there is - such a basic thing, but when done properly it cannot be bettered - and it has a retro feel which is both nostalgic and comforting. It was a staple for me growing up - when your cooking is done on a solid fuel range (a way of cooking when you learn to keep cooking on the plates to a minimum) and you don’t have to think about putting the oven on, regularly baking potatoes is a no brainer. And cooking a potato whole in its skin concentrates the flavour into something quite unique and unmistakable. The thought of chunks of this in a soup was a very appealing one and the reality did live up to my expectations.

When I was researching the soup, I found so many recipes made with any old potato - leftover mash, boiled, even cooked from raw in the soup - I started to think that it was one of those dishes which is more about the commonality in fixings than the base ingredient (a bit like, but not quite as there are actual potatoes in this soup, the idea of pumpkin spiced latte - I can’t think about it without assuming some pumpkin flavour in there which of course there isn’t, it is just the spices you use to flavour pumpkin). Cheese, bacon lardons, chives, sour cream (NOT baked beans). So a baked potato soup is a soup made with potatoes, hopefully baked, and baked potato fixings.

My Baked Potato Soup is of course made with baked potatoes. Baking a potato, whether in a pressure cooker or conventionally, will intensify its flavour and give it a firmer texture - to the extent that it transforms a soup. And honestly, I don’t think I ever want to make a potato soup any other way again.

How to bake potatoes in the pressure cooker.

I was very sceptical about a pressure cooker baked potato, but after much experimenting, I came up with a method which gave me the right flavour and a thin, dry, lightly browned skin, which can still be browned more afterwards if you want to. If you have a pressure cooker with an air fryer lid, or a separate air fryer you can use this or switch your oven on for 10 minutes, no need to preheat. Re the airfryer - I would still pressure cook first, as the airfryer will take 40-50 minutes. Faster than the oven, but still more fuel than pressure cooking.

This method is in Modern Pressure Cooking, but I am going to repeat it here as I must assume that you don’t all have it. Put 1-2cm water in the base of your pressure cooker. Add a steamer basket, making sure the water sits below its base. Pierce the potatoes all over with a skewer or knife point. This is important - an unpierced baked potato is likely to split as steam will build up inside them and fault lines will appear on the potato, splitting the skin and the potato flesh too. Steam escaping from the potato will help the texture while still allowing the flavour to intensify. Put the potatoes in the steamer basket and sprinkle with salt. Close the lid, bring up to high pressure and remember to adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure. Cook for between 10-20 minutes depending on the size of your potatoes. 100-150g will take 10 mins, up to 250g, 15 mins, anything larger, go to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to drop pressure naturally.

There is one other method, which helps you get more potatoes into your cooker. You can lightly rub with oil, and wrap each potato in foil and put directly on the base of the cooker. It means the ones on the bottom are sitting in the water, but that doesn’t matter, as they are wrapped up. These will cook faster. So put the largest potatoes on the bottom. And cook for between 15-25 minutes - foil slows down the cooking.

If you are making baked potatoes anyway, I strongly suggest you make extra to make this soup. And if you want to make this soup, please try it with baked potatoes, I promise you it is worth it.

Baked Potato Soup

This soup tastes amazing, is deliberately simple (I didn’t even add herbs while it cooked, didn’t feel it needed them, I wanted the main flavour to be potato), economical and supremely comforting. Just what we all need right now.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil

15g butter

1 onion, roughly chopped

1 stick celery, diced

3 baked potatoes (around 750g weight), quartered lengthways and sliced

3 leeks, sliced

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

800ml stock (I used chicken, use whatever you like)

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1 cheese rind (optional)

To serve:

4 tbsp sour cream

100g cheese, grated (I used a mixture of Lincolnshire Poacher and Ogleshield

100g bacon lardons, fried in olive oil until crisp

2 tbsp each finely chopped parsley and snipped chives

Heat your pressure cooker and add the olive oil and butter. When the butter has melted, add the onion, celery and potatoes. Saute on a high heat for a few minutes, stirring regularly, then add the leeks and garlic. Stir again and pour in the stock.

At this point you need to make sure you deglaze thoroughly - no matter how long you preheat your pressure cooker, the starch from the potatoes will want to attach itself to the base and you need to detach it before you close the lid. Season generously and stir in the mustard. If you have a cheese rind (I used a Lincolnshire Poacher one) drop on top. Close the lid and bring up to high pressure. Cook for 1 minute at high pressure then remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally. That is the extent of the cooking for this soup!

Taste and adjust the seasoning. Remove any remains of the rind if you used one. You can serve as is, or you can lightly puree. I give it a few short blasts with my stick blender, just to break it up a little, but not too much - I like a soup with texture. You can puree to smooth if you prefer. With the sour cream you have a choice - you can stir through the soup before serving, or you can dollop into the soup once it has been ladled into bowls. I prefer the latter. Sprinkle over the cheese, bacon and herbs and serve.

I am on a non pressure cooking project at the moment and having to test a lot of things conventionally. Which is always hard as one thing about pressure cooking so much is that you become impatient when you know you can do something faster! I am also working on pressure cooker stuff. Lamb ribs are - along with lamb breast - about the cheapest way of eating lamb and I am trying to perfect a recipe using the kind of flavours you find in a jerk seasoning/marinade. Not quite there yet (next up will be version 4), but here is what they look like….

Thank you all for reading. Just to note that there is a 25% discount on a subscription - both monthly and annual - until the end of the month. To put it into context, that works out at a measly 72p a week. This post is a free one so please feel free to share with anyone you think may be in need of a comforting soup!