Goody Girl Potato Soup

I cannot tell you HOW much this Potato Soup made my day. It was a tough eight hours at the office, and I came home to an entire potato and chicken casserole that neither Jim nor I wanted to eat. I wasn't about to toss it all down the disposal, so I got a little creative and decided to recreate this meal AGAIN.

Here is the leftover casserole I started with.

First thing I needed to do was to pick out all the chicken pieces. I suppose I could have left the chicken in there, but I wasn't too excited about a creamy potato soup with hunks of chicken. I put these in a tupperware container and into the fridge, thought it may be good heated up as a snack for Jim.

Next, I threw the rest of the casserole into a dutch oven on the stove over medium heat.

Muchos Gracias to my co-worker Debbie for giving me the idea to use evaporated milk in my soup. It was PERFECT!

I added the one can of evaporated milk, and then filled the can with water and added that as well to the dutch oven.

I continued to heat the mixture and stir it slowly in the dutch oven. The last thing I did was take my handy dandy immersion blender and "spot" blend. I didn't want it completely pureed, I just wanted a few potato chunks in there.

Absolutely no seasoning necessary, everything was already in there. The addition of the evaporated milk and a can of water thinned out the mixture, remember there was already a can of cream of chicken soup added when I created the casserole.

I absolutely loved loved loved this soup. It was like a loaded baked potato in a bowl, but creamy and SPICY since I boiled the potatoes in the crab boil. Oh my oh my, how can I recreate this awesome potato soup in the future without first making Goody Girl Potatoes, and then Potato and Chicken Casserole? Ha! This is one of those meals that makes me feel like, "hey, I actually may have a clue what I'm doing in the kitchen!" I'm still learning and experimenting, and going off recipe with more confidence these days. I still have my ups and downs, but it's the UP's I'm going to celebrate, and the downs I will continue to learn from. Alas, this will be the end of my Goody Girl series.