Potato Soup with Ham

This was my favorite mistake! Made soup for my dad who's having some problems eating, so I wanted to chop up the ham really small with my food processor, along with the celery and onion. Well, I completely pulverized it and was really mad, it was like baby food. It was two ham steaks so I couldn't waste it! So I just made the soup with the pureed ham. It was so good that way! I will do it again like that, or just cut the ham up into small bite size pieces.

The chicken soup base is from Winco bulk food, it's a powder type base. I use it a lot, very good soup base. While you're at Winco, might as well get the french bread "bombs" to use as bread bowls for this soup, just cut the middle out and fill with soup.

6-8 medium sized potatoes, peeled and diced to 1/2" cubes
3 stalks celery
1 onion
Two ham steaks or equivalent leftover ham (probably 3-4 cups)
7 cups water
1/4 cup chicken soup base or 6 boullion cubes
2 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp flour
4 cups whole milk

Prepare the celery, onion, and ham how you prefer...you can dice it very fine or puree in a food processor. I process the onion and celery very fine, and cut the ham into small pieces. Combine the diced potatoes, celery, onion, ham and water in a soup pot. Boil until potatoes are tender, at least 10-15 minutes and check them. Longer if you like the potatoes very soft. Stir in the chicken base or boullion and the pepper.

In a separate skillet, make a roux (relax, it's easy). Melt the butter over medium low heat and add the flour. Stir constantly with a whisk or fork. Cook about one minute until thick, keep stirring and don't let it burn. Slowly add about a cup of the milk and stir as not to allow lumps to form. keep adding the milk and stir any lumps out. Continue stirring and cooking until the mixture is thick, about 4-5 minutes.

Add the milk mixture (your Roux!) to the soup pot, mix to combine and heat through. Serve soup with bread or crackers. Delicious, easy soup that can be done after work for dinner, it took about an hour including all the vegetable prep time.