Burning My Soup

 Argh! I just tossed out another pot of potato soup. This is the third pot of potato soup that I have attempted that has failed completely by tasting of disgusting scorched mess. Silver lining of this go round is that I smelled the fail as I was bringing the potatoes to boil so I stopped, tasted, and threw out the pot before adding some of the more expensive ingredients. I also have a pound of crisp bacon to nibble on. 

The ingredients I had to dispose of represent about $18. I have wasted more money on less noble pursuits than a failed lunch. It is irritating to not be able to bring off a recipe I have made successfully dozens of times. It is by far my best soup. It is one of the easier dishes I make and yields this nice pot that makes leftovers for several days. I like that. 

I start the soup off by frying bacon. I typical fry up a pound of bacon since that is one package. I remove the bacon leaving the grease in the bottom of the pot. I decided to be smart this time around since this is an easy place to burn something. Instead of cooking the bacon in the bottom of the soup pot I fried it in my skillet and transferred the grease. Yes there is a little bit of crispy bacon bits in the bottom of the pot, but that isn't a problem.

Next I drop in 3 cloves of minced garlic with a splash of olive oil. The garlic browns and becomes fragrant in about 30 seconds over medium heat. At this point you drop in 2 finely diced onions and butter. The onions will take about 4-6 minutes to soften and begin to carmelize. As for the measure of butter I normally eyeball thing. I start with about half to three quarters of a stick. 

When the onions are cooked you begin sprinkling in up to 3 cups of flour to create a sort of paste. My experience is that I want this to be about the consistency of playdough but not sticky. I will drop in a bit more butter to get where I need to be. 

I think the next step is where I keep screwing things up. 

Next you drop in your diced potatoes. The original recipe calls for two pounds. I typically double everything because the soup is good and doesn't last long around my house. The potatoes go in followed by a mixture of heavy cream, chicken stock, milk, ancho chili powder, salt, pepper. I believe what is happening is that the mixture in the bottom of the pot is burning while I am adding ingredients. 

I might be wrong. 

The next step is to increase the hit and bring the soup to a boil. I am paranoid about the soup since I have fubared it a couple of times now. I was stirring with religious fervor as the temperature climbed. I even had Ashley take over for me while I washed the bowl I had the potatoes and my measuring cup. I like to clean as I go, but I wasn't confident enough to just walk away at this phase. 

I got everything put away from the sink. I took over stirring and got a whiff of burnt smell. I dug to the bottom of the pot and noticed some dark flecks in the soup. Super bad sign. I grabbed a spoon and tasted the soup. It tasted like extremely well spiced potato soup that had been burnt. 

I cursed venomously. I threw the spoon to the sink. I moved the pot off of the hot eye of the stove and turned off the stove top. I dumped the half done soup out near the treeline. As I type this the soup pot is soaking in Dawn dishwashing liquid. The bottom of it is scorched. It supports my hypothesis that I burned the garlic and onion mixture while I was adding in everything else. Also once I have washed that burnt paste through the entire pot with the liquids I am going to end up with a nasty tasting pot of disappointment and ruin. Argh. 

I used to make the soup in my Mom's old dutch oven. The first time it went bad was in the dutch oven, and when I inspected the bottom of it I found some worn spots that made me think it wasn't heating evenly due to age. I resolved to replace the dutch oven and have not for sentimental reasons. The second failure happened in my stock pot. It is stainless steel. 

Today's failure was in my larger stainless steel stock pot. I am going to lean toward me doing something wrong in my technique rather than there being a problem with the pot. However, I also went ahead and ordered a replacement dutch oven. I have lost faith in Moms due to some other cooking mishaps. 

I am also fairly aggressively wanting to get my potato soup right. I have this desire as much because I want some good potato soup as I want to prove to myself that I can get my own recipe right. I have something of a plan. I don't know that it is a good plan, but it is a plan. 

I am going to cook the bacon, onions, and garlic in my frying pan. I will add the flour there as well. I should have great control over temperature and consistency in the smaller pan. Separately, I will drop my potatoes in the liquid mixture with the appropriate seasoning and boil them until they are fork tender. I will lower the temperature and thoroughly mix in the onions, garlic, and flour mixture and with a bit of luck I will get the almost finished potato soup without the corruption of anything burning. 

With everything nicely mixed I can pull out about half the soup and run it through the puree setting on my blender. Once it is all back in the pot I will drop in the shredded cheese and sour cream, stir it all together to bring out a lovely finished soup, and serve with bacon bits over the top. 

It sounds quick and easy. It is absolutely delicious when it turns out right. Honestly, I even enjoy doing all the prep work. I spend quite a bit of time neatly dicing the potatoes. I chop up a fresh onion. That prep work is almost therapeutic in and of itself. Granted it just feels like a waste of time when the soup comes out tasting like the bottom of a charcoal grill.