Skip to main content

Easy Cookery - Irish Potato Soup

 This article was originally published in Hubpges in November 2009.

Ready to eat in under 30 minutes!

When you want food which is hot, tasty and quick to make, give Irish Potato Soup a try.

It is easy to make, very tasty and filling, and also economical. It can be made in under half an hour - which is why this traditional Irish meal has proved so popular for so long.

Potato soup can be served either as a filling starter or as the main meal. Serve with crusty bread, garlic bread or French toast. Add a knob of salted butter, if you wish.

How to Make Irish Potato Soup

Ingredients

  • Potatoes (3 or 4 large potatoes per person)
  • Big onion (or use leeks if you prefer)
  • Garlic (optional)
  • Pinch of salt
  • Herbs and pepper to taste (cayenne pepper, tumeric, mixed herbs and spices are all good additions)
  • Cheese

Bring a pan of water to the boil (or use hot water from the kettle to save time) and meanwhile peel and dice the potatoes and onion. Add everything apart from the cheese to the pan and bring back to the boil then simmer until thoroughly cooked.

Use a potato masher to make the pan's contents pulpy. Don't throw too much fluid away - you're making soup, remember!

Cube the cheese and stir this into the pan. You can use any kind of cheese, including several different kinds all at once (also known as Whatever Lurks in the Cheese Dish.) Cheese which has gone past its best can also be used, which adds to the economy of the meal.

Let the cheese go enticingly gloopy for a minute, then serve and enjoy!


Ingredient = potatoes, one large onion, your choice of cheese, and a dash of salt and pepper! Garlic can be used too, if you wish.

Casa Bray Cuisine

Potato soup was a stalwart of the winter's menu, when I was a child. Mum used to regularly bubble-up a vast vat of the stuff, and it was a matter of fierce pride as to who got the best gloopy cheese bits.

My sister Hazel and I would be called upon to cut the cheese into rough cubes while Mum prodded at the steaming contents of her beloved pressure cooker. Actually, that's a pressure cooker in the photo but I only ever use it as a normal pan as I find the palaver of the pressure-system to be more trouble than it's worth. Plus pressure cookers make vegetables taste of boiled water and little else, in my opinion.

But the cheese... That innocent-looking staple food was the cause of many a surreptitious battle as we tried to shovel more into the pan than Mum approved of. We usually won, partially because she had only one set of eyes and partially because she liked cheese too.

When Dad would arrive home from work around 8pm or later, smelling of diesel oil from the the HGV lorry he drove all over Britain, more cheese would be added to the pan so he'd get his fair share. Two bowls and several slices of thick bread later, he finish off with a mug of sweet tea before nodding-off in his armchair. He'd be out of the house again at 4am, ready for another day's driving. One time, he worked those hours for three months straight without a break. In the end, when his boss phoned up to 'invite' him to work on his long-awaited day off, Mum pretended she didn't know where he was; he'd gone out and she didn't know when he'd be back. Actually he was sat at the table reading the newspaper, exhausted to the point of collapse.

My hubby, Richard, has IBS and so can't eat dairy. But the soup's usage hasn't died out in this household. Simply adapt the receipe by using a lactose-free cheese.

My niece learned how to make it while discovering the joys of student poverty.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Cure for Aging?

"All that we profess to do is but this, - to find out the secrets of the human frame; to know why the parts ossify and the blood stagnates, and to apply continual preventatives to the effort of time.  This is not magic; it is the art of medicine rightly understood.  In our order we hold most noble -, first, that knowledge which elevates the intellect; secondly, that which preserves the body.  But the mere art (extracted from the juices and simples) which recruits the animal vigour and arrests the progress of decay, or that more noble secret which I will only hint to thee at present, by which heat or calorific, as ye call it, being, as Heraclitus wisely taught, the primordial principle of life, can be made its perpectual renovator...." Zanoni, book IV, chapter II, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first published in 1842. Oroboros keyring - Spooky Cute Designs The idea of being able to achieve an immortal life is probably as old as human life itself.  Folklore and myt...
15 comments
Read more

Remembering Richie Tattoo Artist's Studio

Richard in the street entrance to his tattoo studio in Liverpool. The vertical sign next to Richard is now in the Liverpool Tattoo Museum. Yesterday, my sister Evelyn, Richard and myself stood outside Richard's old tattoo studio and looked up at the few remaining signs, whose paint has now mostly flacked away to reveal bare wood. On the studio's window are stick-on letters which read, "Art", where once it boldly announced his presence as the city's only "Tattoo Artist".  I can remember him buying that simple plastic lettering from an old-fashioned printer's shop. This was in 1993, not long after he'd opened the studio and before he could afford better signs. After he'd patiently stuck them onto the glass we realised that from the outside the sign read "Artist Tattoo", so we had to carefully peel the letters off the window and have another go, laughing over having made such an obvious error yet worried in case we spoiled the letteri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Falling Trees and Blue Portraits

Birkenhead Park Visitor Centre, 7th April 2019, by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. My ongoing series of sketches in the park continues unabated, as is evident. On a few recent sketches I've added some simple washes of watercolour to bring another dimension to the scenes. I've long grown accustomed to sketching in public, and the few people who've passed any comment have always been encouraging. I've even unintentionally captured a tiny bit of park history:- I drew this lovely arching tree in February this year, and since then its own weight has pulled its roots out from the ground. Probably due to safety concerns, it has been brutally cut back so it's now little more than a stump, and the horizontal section, with all its vertical branches, has been removed. Hopefully the tree will survive this harsh treatment. "How can walkies please, when every step's a wheeze?" by Adele Cosgrove-Bray. Portrait by Adele Cosgrove-Bray; chalk and charcoal...
11 comments
Read more