Potato Cheese Soup 11/14/09

Last winter my fall back for our Saturday soup was potato soup.  There were several variations, but the best one by far was a simple version made with the stock I made from the Christmas ham.  The simple substitution of the ham stock instead of my usual chicken stock.

With all the plans we had for today, I wasn't sure if we would have soup tonight, but the snow storm this morning changes our plans and you get another soup recipe.

I don't have any ham stock in my freezer, but I did have a ham hock so I tried a quick one.

Ham Stock
1 ham hock
handful of baby carrots (worked out to be about 5)
about 6 small stocks of celery (I needed about 5 for tomorrow's dinner so I just pulled out the little ones on the inside)
3 bay leaves

Fill a soup pot with water, add all the ingredients - no need to chop the carrots and celery as you will just pull them out later.  Cover the pot and bring to a boil.  Drop the temperature to a low/med and let simmer for several hours.  Pull out the hamhock and bay leaves.  Pull the meat off the hamhock and return to pot.

.....
I waited too long to finish this so now I don't remember what I did.  I probably cut up some potatoes, let them simmer in the ham stock.  Blended the mix and then added cheese.  I used velveeta in this one, it melts very nicely.  Add salt, pepper to taste and finish with a bit a cream or half/half.

The real point of this potato soup recipe was to try the quick ham stock option - well not so quick, but still good.