Potato and Ham soup

I'm back on a roll! I am cooking again and it feels so good. Yesterday I made cinnamon rolls and yeast rolls from the beauty of bread post and then made a lovely potato soup with the ham bone from Thanksgiving.

Usually if I have a ham bone then I make a pot of beans but since the baby and I are usually the only ones to eat them, I thought I would try something different with the ham bone. This turned out great.

1 ham bone
water
5 potatoes, peeled and diced
2 medium onions, chopped into large sections
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 carrots, diced
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup heavy cream

olive oil

salt and pepper

ground nutmeg

In a large pot I placed the ham bone, about 2 tbs olive oil, chopped onions and salt. I sauteed the onions and ham to get some of those nice brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Once the onions became translucent I added 12 cups of water, brought to a boil and then simmered for 2 hours.

Remove the ham bone, pull off any meat and chop into bite-size pieces. Discard ham bone and add ham back to pot. Add celery, carrots, potatoes, salt (remember the ham will be salty so don't over salt) and pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to simmer for 40 minutes.

Mix flour and 1/4 cup water then slowly pour into the soup while constantly stirring soup. Cook for another 5 minutes, add cream then remove from heat. Sprinkle a little nutmeg on each serving.

This was a thin potato soup so in the future I would consider removing some potatoes, mashing them and then returning them to the pot. However, I would also like to add some cut up cabbage that would serve as a filler and my husband added some shredded cheddar which also thickened it a bit. I think for personal taste I would add some thyme and maybe even some coriander, you know how I love the combination of these two!