Recipe: Pork & Potato Potage

Spring has sprung, but we’re still having some icky cold, rainy/snowy days. This thick, hearty soup is a great winter warmer. Like all my soups & most of my stews, I make this in the slow-cooker. If you are making this on the stove-top, use the heaviest-bottomed large pot you have.

Ingredients:

• Pork sausages or cubed pork (leftover pork chops work too!)
• 2 cups small white beans (Navy or Great Northern)
• 1 large onion
• 2-3 cloves garlic (or more to taste)
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 3-4 large potatoes
• 6 cups water or stock
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper (or more to taste)
• Salt to taste if needed

Note about the white beans: small white beans don’t need as much pre-cooking as kidney beans or black beans. I poured boiling water over the beans, let them sit for about an hour, and then drained them and added them to the slow-cooker. They cooked just fine in the soup.

Method:

1. Saute onions and garlic. Once they begin to soften, add the oregano and thyme, and saute until the onions start to caramelize. Transfer to slow-cooker.
2. In the same pan, brown the sausages or pork, reserving the fat. If using pork chops, sear both sides – don’t worry about them cooking through as they will simmer in the soup.
3. Take pork out of pan and allow to cool.
4. While the sausages/pork is cooling, scrub or peel potatoes and dice into small cubes.
5. Cut the sausages/pork into bite-sized pieces.
6. Put the potatoes, sausages, and stock into the slow-cooker and turn slow-cooker on to the “high” setting.
7. Cook on “high” for 4 hours. If cooking on the stove top, simmer for about an hour, or longer, stirring regularly.

We like our soups really thick (hence “Potage”¹), so I make a basic roux using the reserved pork fat and add it to the soup once it comes to a simmer in the slow-cooker. The better quality sausages or pork meat you use, the better this soup will taste!

¹ My Oxford English Dictionary defines Potage as “A thick (vegetable) soup.” Wikipedia is more descriptive, and pretty close to the mark with “a category of thick soups, stews, or porridges, in some of which meat and vegetables are boiled together with water until they form into a thick mush.” But very tasty mush!