Potato Cheese Soup with Turkey Sausage

As I’ve previously mentioned, our Monday night gamers are big guys with hearty appetites.  They appreciate good food, but they’re not particularly demanding of complexity.  We’ve previously made this soup for them, and every time I mention it, they all rave and ask when it is we’re having it next, so this week seemed like a good time to make it.

One of the things I like about it is that we can make it Sunday afternoon or evening, then just warm it up Monday night.  I get the added benefit of cooking together with The Rocket Scientist on Sunday and have the free time Monday to prepare for the gaming.

INGREDIENTS

1 medium onion, diced (about 1 ½ cups)

12 stalks celery, diced (about 3 cups)

25 baby carrots, diced (about 2 ½ cups)

6 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, cubed bite-sized (about 2 ¼ to 2 ½ pounds)

2 lbs turkey sausage, cubed bite-sized

2 quarts water

Olive oil for sautéing

¼ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Bread bowls (optional)

For the Cheese Sauce

½ cup flour

1 stick butter

3 ½ cups of Half and Half

2 lbs finely-shredded sharp cheddar cheese

TASK FLOW

Sautee onions, add sausage, set aside

Sautee celery and carrots

Add water, potatoes, cook until tender

Make roux, turn into cheese sauce

Add cheese sauce and sausage/onion mixture

We’ve discovered that sometimes when we cook, we can cook and prep at the same time.  For some dishes, it’s advantageous to have all the prep work done in advance.  This soup is one of the latter. 

We started by sautéing the onions until they were just translucent, then adding the sausage and cooking them together for a few minutes, until the sausage browned nicely.  We prefer regular smoked sausage for this, but Kielbasa would work as well, and of course, you can use pork sausage.  We then sat that aside to add later.

While that was going on, we lightly sautéed the celery and carrots in the 9 ½ quart Dutch oven that the soup cooks in.  We then added the water and potatoes and cooked over a medium-high heat until all the vegetables were tender.  My first thought was that the potatoes would take the longest, but it was actually the carrots.  We found out on previous versions of this that the vegetables aren’t going to cook much more once they get integrated with the cheese sauce, so now is when we want to get them to the consistency we’d like in the end. 

In a large saucepan, we made the roux by melting the butter and slowly whisking in the flour.  The trick I’ve learned here is to not let your heat get too high, because it’ll stick to the bottom of the saucepan pretty easily. 

We turned the roux into a cheese sauce by first whisking in the Half and Half, then slowly adding the shredded cheese.  Finely shredded cheese (I think we used Sargento in the two pound bag) will make a smoother sauce more easily than the more thickly-shredded stuff.  We whisked the mixture slowly until the sauce was nicely creamy and smooth, with no lumps or solid pieces left.  Again, the low heat will keep this from sticking.  It’s a little time-consuming, but worthwhile in the end.

Once the cheese sauce was done, we mixed it into the Dutch oven with the rest of the ingredients, stirring until it was well integrated.  We then stirred in the sausage and onion mixture and set it on a medium-low heat for about an hour.  The final step before letting it cook was to add in the nutmeg.  Nutmeg adds a great flavor, but a little goes a long way, even in a hearty dish like this. 

At first, we thought that we had put too much liquid in, but after the hour, the soup had thickened nearly perfectly.  If when you cook it, you find that it’s a little thin, add a little cornstarch.  Again, keeping the heat on low prevents any nasty sticking or burning to the bottom of the pot.

We put the soup in the fridge overnight.  I then took it out at about 3pm and put it on a very low heat until we ate it around 7.  We picked up bread bowls at Panera to serve it in.

The wine we chose was 2007 Chateau Ste. Michelle & Dr. Loosen Riesling Eroica, a nice value when you can get it for less than $20.  As always, the soup was a hit, and most of it disappeared pretty quickly.  Fortunately, there was enough left for today’s lunch.