Soup-er Sunday Sneaky Potato Soup

Once again, our little cul-de-sac is swathed in snow.  The little mouths and I are in our jammies, well, jammies and apron for me, and snug as bugs. 

One of the best ways to keep our bodies resilient and get much needed veggies into the little mouth's diet is soup.  With two sick kids in two weeks, we need to beef up our immune systems.  I'd love to be able to stuff them full of super-foods, like kale and turnip greens, but if they would eat that stuff, they would be no need for my blog.  So while I have one child who's idea of a smorgasbord is the produce section, the other one wouldn't touch a tomato with a ten foot pole.  I have to be sneaky.  

This is a soup I invented one day with what was in my pantry with a little inspiration from Jessica Seinfeld.  You can hide just about anything in this soup.  I have included cauliflower, summer squash, butternut squash, carrots and parsnips.  It is especially good with anything that is a little orange in color.  My family, even the adults, swear there is cheese in this soup.  But except for the occasional garnish, there's not a drop. 

This is also a great way to use up leftover bacon (as if), sausage or ham.  Today I threw in a cup of diced leftover holiday ham from the freezer.  Thumbs up from Big Mama and both little mouths.  Yummy in the tummy on a cold winter's day.

Sneaky Potato Soup

1 cup grated onion
2 cups grated carrot
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon ground mustard
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Salt and Pepper
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup white wine (optional)
2 pounds potatoes (I used Yukon Gold)
4 cups chicken stock
4 cups milk

Cook onion and carrot in butter, salt and pepper.  Add herbs, spices and flour and stir until lightly browned.  Deglaze the pan with wine or chicken stock.  Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer or 45-60 minutes, until potatoes are creamy and falling apart.  Add ham etc. to taste.

The only difficult thing about this soup is finding a good pot to cook it in.  For most of my soups, I use my totally overpriced but beloved enamel covered cast iron dutch oven, similar to this:
 While it caramelizes the onion and carrots beautifully, this soup is half milk that needs to simmer for at least 45 minutes to cook the potatoes through.  I've tried adding the potatoes already boiled, but it definitely steals some of the flavor.  The last time I used this pot for the soup, I spent a day soaking and scrubbing the bottom of my pot and vowed, never again.

The next time I tried this stock pot that came with my set of Calphalon Cookware. 
It's non-stick surface made the cleanup a breeze, but the deep, rich flavor of the caramelized veggies was missing.  But better than the heart attack I had when I looked at the bottom of my Enameled Cast-Iron pot.

This time I used a new dutch oven I purchased recently at a chef's outlet I visited.  It's also Calphalon, but this is from their Unison line and promises "non-stick searing."  I was sceptical, but I gave it a go.  And guess what?  It worked beautifully.  This is the exact set I purchased, complete with free spoon and towel.   It gave the same flavor as my extremely expensive enameled pot, but the easy cleaning of the non-stick.  I LOVE IT!