Potato Soup For People Who Can't Be Trusted With Perishable Ingredients (Or The Stove)

Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash

 I was hoping you get you some more Dresden Files before doing another recipe post, but honestly this one is too good not to share. Also apparently my last recipe post was more than a year ago, so that makes me feel a little better. Technically, the title on this one may be a little misleading - it contains somewhere between 2 and 5 perishable ingredients depending on how fancy you want to get, and how you define "perishable", but they're things I always have around and that usually get used fast enough to avoid problems. Your mileage may vary, depending largely on how many coffee drinkers with different needs you have in your house. The only absolutely non-optional perishable ingredient here is butter. The version of the recipe presented here is how I actually made it, possible variations, substitutions, and improvements are discussed below. I made this one in the big 10 cup rice cooker, and I'm uncertain about scaling it down enough for the 2 cup model, but it could probably be adjusted for a medium sized cooker. As with the previous recipe, all measurements were done by eye or with a 2 cup Pyrex. 

Ingredients

• Potato Flakes - 3 cups
• Chicken Broth (from cubes or a box) - 8 cups
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped up fine
• Dried chives - a couple tablespoons
• Dehydrated chopped onion - a couple tablespoons
• Black pepper
• Salted butter, chopped up - 4 tbsp (half a stick)
• Whole milk - 1/2 cup
• Heavy cream - 1/2 cup 
• Salt

Directions 

1. Measure out the potato flakes and put them in the rice cooker.
2. Put the first 2 chicken cubes in 2 cups of water, if you're using cubes, and put them in the microwave for two or three minutes. 
3. While that's going, start cutting up the onion
4. Remove the chicken broth from the microwave and finish dissolving the cubes
5. Pour the chicken broth into the rice cooker
6. Start the next 2 cups of broth
7. Plug in the rice cooker 
8. Finish cutting up the onion and add it to the rice cooker
9. Add the next 2 cups of broth to the rice cooker (you're at four now), and start the next 2
10. Cut the butter into 1tbsp slices
11. Cut each slice into rough squares
12. Put the butter into the rice cooker and stir
13. Add the next two cups of broth to the rice cooker (you're at six now), and start the next 2
14. Add the chives (about enough to cover the surface of the liquid) and stir
15. Add the dehydrated chopped onion (about enough to cover the surface of the liquid), and stir
16. Add the pepper (about enough to cover the surface of the liquid, and then a little more) and stir
17. Add the last two cups of broth
18. Add the milk
19. Add the heavy cream
20. Stir it up real good
21. Set the rice cooker to "cook"

Nothing here really needs to be cooked in the conventional sense. If "let it run until you can smell it from two rooms away" does not work for you, give it maybe 30-40 minutes. My rice cooker did not recognize itself as "done" at this point, but the soup was boiling a bit. Makes about 4 servings, if this is your lunch, more if you're using it as a side dish. I forgot to add any salt before cooking it, except what was already in the butter and the broth, so add salt to taste after serving. 

Possible modifications and substitutions

• If you don't have an onion, you could probably use half a bottle to a whole bottle of dehydrated chopped onion instead
• You could also make up some of the difference with onion powder, but I almost never use onion powder so I'm not sure how much you'd want
• If you're using broth from a box or a can, rather than cubes, you don't have to microwave it two cups at a time. Feel free to add it all at once after the potato flakes, but put the seasonings (chives, dehydrated onion, and pepper) in before the butter. 
• Doing everything while the cubes are in the microwave is the fastest way, but if you want to sit down while the broth is microwaving, you can do everything except the spices first, mostly take a break while you do the broth, and then add the spices at the end. 
• There are a lot of different ways you could get the amount milk-stuff this recipe calls for. A cup of half and half is a perfectly good substitute for the milk and heavy cream. A cup of milk (any kind, although higher fat content is better) and 4 extra tablespoons of butter (another half cup) would work. A bit more than half a cup of heavy cream, and an extra half cup of broth, or even water, would probably be fine. If you have absolutely no milk or cream of any kind, even powdered, use five additional tablespoons of butter and it will probably be basically okay. 
• You will probably be okay without the chives, but consider adding a little more onion to compensate. 
• Unsalted butter is fine, but if you're not deliberately being low sodium, you'll want to add a couple teaspoons of salt.  

Possible improvements

• It's hard to go wrong adding more milk to a potato dish of this kind. You could probably replace up to half the liquid volume with milk. 
• If you have access to fresh chives (from the store or a window box) that would probably be great. If you're confident in your foraging abilities, or have access to someone who is, feel free to give wild chives a shot (I intend to as soon as the ground isn't covered in ice and snow), but if I remember correctly they have at least one poisonous lookalike in my area, so please be careful and don't poison yourself. 
• My version does not use any garlic, because I don't generally have fresh garlic on hand and lately garlic powder upsets my stomach. This would probably be good with garlic. 
• You could definitely add a couple teaspoons of salt to the cooker, rather than doing it all at the end. 
• This would probably be great with bacon, tvp-based "bacon bits", or anything bacon-y that you happen to have on hand. 
• This would also probably be great with cheese. 
• I'm almost sure there's a productive way to add sour cream to this, but I've been struggling to work out exactly how. If you have an idea, please let me know in the comments. 

Unlike the rice cooker chicken and rice that I make a hard minimum of once a week, this was an experiment that just went really well. I tried making mashed potatoes in the rice cooker a few weeks ago, and they came out kind of soupy, so I thought maybe I'd just lean into that and see how it went. The next Dresden Files post is happening as quickly as I can get it to, I promise. Until then, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!