Recipe: Cream of Potato Pearl and Bacon Soup

Tonight our ward is having our monthly enrichment meeting . It appears to be a special night called: "A Walk with Angels". The invitation included this scripture:

"And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you to bear you up." D&C 84:88

They are giving each sister a special gift and we will be having a tasting table of food made from food storage. I am making the Cream of Potato Pearl and Bacon Soup.

I was distracted and forgot to take a picture of all of the ingredients. They brought them to me so I cannot recreate them. I do not have Potato Pearls in my food storage, nor have I ever used them - so this was kind of interesting.

Ingredients:
3-4 strips of bacon or 1 can turkey, chicken or port chunks with broth.
(they brought me a couple of tablespoons of bacon bits)

1 cup potato pearls

1/4 - 1/2 cup chopped onion or 2 Tbsp dry onions reconstituted
(I used 1/2 cup sweet onion - I wanted a lot of flavor so I used the top amount. They brought me the sweet onion - not dry onions)

1-2 oz. Dry pack carrots reconstituted
(They brought me 1 fresh carrot.)

2 Cups water / liquid (include in this the broth from the canned turkey)

1 cup dry milk (powder)

1 Tbsp Flour

2 Tbsp. butter or margarine

Salt and pepper to taste

2 - 2 1/2 additional water (as needed for soup consistency)

The first thing in the instructions was to: cook bacon and break in pieces when cooled enough to handle. I didn't do this because I had bacon bits.
Boil 2 cups water. Then take off from heat and add the 1 cup of potato pearls. It was amazing as the water was sucked into the potato pearls in seconds. I didn't know what to expect, I thought it would look like diced potatoes - but it became more like a mashed potato consistency.

Instructions says to: stir in potato pearls and reconstitute onions and carrots until thick and fluffy. Set aside.

Since my onion and carrot were not dried, I chopped them up.

I didn't want them to be crunchy - so I cooked them in about 1/2 tablespoon of butter until they were soft.

In the other 2 - 2 1/2 cup of water: Stir flour into dry milk and add to remaining additional heated liquid. Beat until smooth. (I should have put it in the blender). Add butter and cook over low heat or boiling water, until slightly thickened, about 15 minutes, stirring as necessary to prevent sticking and lumping.

If I do this again, I may melt the butter, add the flour and make a rue. Then I would add the powdered milk (that I already made up and had in the fridge) and cook until it was slightly thickened.

Add extra water to make a soup consistency. I used all of the 2 1/2 cup water.

Combine with potatoes, onion, carrots, bacon/chicken, turkey or pork and reheat.

Thin further, with water if necessary or thicken further with a few potato pearls to soup consistency.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

I then put it in the crock pot to cook for a couple of hours before I take it to the meeting. I wanted the bacon taste to penetrate the soup.

It was good and I would definitely make this again.

I had Brady taste it and he would eat it too when we are living off of food storage - which means he would eat it every once in a while - but more if he was starving - LOL!

I'm excited to attend the meeting and taste all of the other recipes. They have already mailed all of the recipes out. Here is the list of the items that will be on the tasting table - it will be really interesting:

Cream of Potato and Bacon Soup

Pinto Bean Fudge

Chicken Pasta Salad

Applescotch Crisp

Applesauce Bread

Refried Bean 7 Layer Dip

Apple Upside Down Cake

Potato Pearl Salad

I will take pictures when I get there and add them to my Recipe file and what I thought of them. I'm excited that they are giving out more food storage recipes! Yeah!