The Dorm Chef

Baked Potato Soup with Andoullie Sausage

Last week, my girlfriend and I went to an Italian restaurant to eat lunch.  I won’t say what restaurant because I didn’t particularly like my meal and I don’t want to bash anyone, but I did have an amazing soup before my meal came out.  It was a roasted garlic potato soup and it was undoubtedly the best part of the meal.

Now, I’ve always liked potato soup, something which I think started from eating chunky soup when I was younger.  Obviously from there, the soups I’ve tried have only gotten better over time, but I had never made one before.  The soup I had last week made all that change.  I couldn’t resist the urge to my hand and give potato soup a go.

Also, if you like this, check out my other potato soup recipe.

Ingredients:

6-8 medium potatoes

16oz andoullie sausage

2 cups milk

2.5 cups chicken broth

1 can cream of chicken

1 can cream of onion

1 cup of shredded cheese

Salt

Pepper

Garlic Powder

Optional Ingredients:

Any type of sausage

cream of whatever you’d like

Ingredients used in this recipe

Step 1) Peel the potatoes and cut them in 1/2 inch cubes and put them in a large pot and cover them with water.  Turn the stove top on high and let water come to a boil.  Add a little salt to the pot to give the potatoes some flavor.  Let boil for about 20 minutes.  You’ll know if they’re done if you can take a spoon and slice a potato in half with ease. When done, turn the stove top off.

Boiling Potatoes

Step 2) Chop up the sausage in small little pieces, similar in size to the potato.  I cut the link in half, and then in half again, then cut the 4 slices of sausage into little cubes.  Throw this all in a pan and brown the sausage.  Shouldn’t take any longer than 10 minutes.

Cooking Andoullie Sausage

Step 3) Once your potatoes are done, drain all the water from the pot leaving just the potatoes.  Take about 4 cups (half of the cooked potatoes) and put them in a bowl and mash them up.  Leave the other potatoes in the pot you cooked them in.

Mashing the Potatoes

Step 4) Throw your milk, cream of onion, cream of chicken, and chicken broth back into the first pot with the rest of the potatoes.  Stir a little bit just to mix everything up.  You’re not trying to mash the rest of the potatoes you started with.  Now throw in your mashed potato and your sausage and stir again. Now is when you can throw in all your seasonings.  I put a lot of garlic in mine because I wanted it to taste garlicky.   Turn the stove top back on to medium and continue stirring the mixture so all of the potato and sausage don’t stick to the bottom.  I let it cook for about 30 minutes.

Everything together

Step 5) Turn the stove top off after 30 minutes and let the soup sit for about 10 minutes.  I found it gets a little thicker after sitting for a while.  Now serve in a bowl and pour about a tbsp or two of shredded cheese on top.  Enjoy!

Oh Snap! This dish was amazing, easily the best thing I’ve made so far. I went grocery shopping with my mom and sister this past weekend and I was thinking of things to cook during the week. At the time I pictured myself cooking onions and bell peppers with a nice chicken breast in the oven, but when it came time to make dinner last night I just wasn’t feeling it.

Instead I decided to use the stew meat (beef cut into chunks) instead of the chicken, and I wanted to do the whole thing on the stove top in a pan. When I started making the dish I decided to eat the beef, onion, and pepper mix over a bed of rice and peas, but as I was cooking and the smell overcame me I couldn’t allow myself to waste any of the gravy in the pan. I decided to just throw the brown rice and peas into the pan and let it absorb all of the gravy. It was a great decision! Like I said earlier, this was the best thing I’ve made yet.

The best thing is that I’m pretty sure I could make this in the dorm as well. At the end of the post I’ll tell you what to do if you want to make this without an oven.

Ingredients:
8oz of stew meat (any type of cubed beef)
1 medium green bell pepper
1 large onion
1 cup of Brown rice
1 can of no salt peas (8.5 oz)
4 tbsp of butter or margarine
1/3 cup of water
1 tbsp Tony Chacheres
1.5 tbsp of Kitchen Bouquet browning sauce
1 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
2 tsp of black pepper
1 tsp of cayenne pepper

Optional Ingredients:
Other sliced vegetables
white rice
Noodles

Ingredients

Step 1) Throw one cup of brown rice, two cups of water, and the can of peas into a dish and microwave it for 20 minutes or so, until all the water is gone.

Cooked rice and peas

Step 2) Take a pan and turn the stove top to medium-high heat. Chop up your onion and pepper into thin long strips. Throw them into the pan and put the butter on top. Stir and let cook for about 15 minutes or until the onion and pepper are a golden color and are no longer hard.

Cooked onions and peppers

Step 3) Season your meat and throw it into the pan as well. Try to move the onions and pepper aside so that the meat can be touching the bottom of the pan. Just throw the onions and pepper on top of the meat. Let cook for about 10 minutes and then add your browning sauce. Stir the pan to make sure everything is nice and mixed.

After the meat is thrown in

Step 4) By this time your rice and peas should be done. Pour the mix into the pan and add the water. Stir so that everything becomes mixed. Turn the stove down to medium, cover the pan, and let cook for about 10 minutes.

After the rice is thrown in

That’s it! Everything should be done now.

Now, if you want to make this using a microwave, here is how I would do it.

Step 1) Microwave the rice and peas same as above.

Step 2) Throw your seasoned meat into a separate, larger bowl and microwave it until it is completely cooked. Not sure how long this would take. I’m thinking about 15-20 minutes, just make sure to stir the meat every 5 minutes or so since the microwave cooks unevenly.

Step 3) Throw your onion, bell pepper, and butter into a third bowl and microwave until the onions and peppers are a golden brown color. I’m thinking at least 10 minutes, but I don’t know as I haven’t tried it yet.

Step 4) Mix all three bowls into one large bowl (hopefully one of the three was large enough to handle everything together) Throw in your browning sauce and water in as well and stir thoroughly. Stick back in the microwave for about five more minutes.

Done! I just want to say that I haven’t tried the microwave steps yet, that is what I would do in the dorm room though, feel free to make adjustments. Just make sure the meat is cooked, that is the most important step.

Sweet potatoes are pretty awesome, they are basically the candy of vegetables in my opinion. Aside from their great taste, sweet potatoes are known as a superfood, which basically means that they are very healthy.

I think I love this dish so much because this is another thing my mom makes only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter. It really isn’t all that difficult to make either, which is good news for all of us! Typically, this would be made in an oven, which would add a crispy texture to the dish, but unfortunately that isn’t an option for us.

Ingredients:
- Sweet Potatoes ( ~15oz can)
- Marshmallows (1 cup)
- Brown Sugar (3/4 cup)
- Butter (2 tbsp)

Optional Ingredients:
- Pecans (chopped, 1/2 cup)

Ingredients

Step 1: Open up the can of yams and drain all of the syrup from the can. Dump the yams into a microwavable dish. try to break apart some of the yams, but try not to mash them up into a paste (I made this mistake and that is why my final product looks the way it does)

Step 2: Throw your butter and brown sugar into the container and mix with the yams.

Step 3: Throw the marshmallows on top of mixture and spread out evenly. If it looks like too much or not enough, adjust accordingly. The marshmallows should just cover up the sweet potato mixture.

I mixed my marshmallows in with everything else

Optional Step: If you are using pecans, throw them in before you throw the marshmallows in.

Step 4: Place dish in the microwave for about 3-4 minutes. Once the marshmallows are melted, it’s done.

Step 5: If you let it sit for awhile, the marshmallows might harden a little and form a kind of crust on the top, but I didn’t even bother with it. I just stirred it all up together, it still tastes the same, just not as presentable.

Fresh out of the microwave, still bubbly

Enjoy!

-1/2 lb of spaghetti
-your favorite Ragu Pasta Sauce
-fresh Italian sausage
-salt and pepper

(makes one hefty or two normal servings)

My recommendations for ingredients:
-1/2 lb of whole wheat spaghetti
-Ragu Robusto Parmesan & Romano Pasta Sauce
-fresh Hot Italian Sausage

Step 1: Take your 1/2 lbs of spaghetti put them in a tupperware dish. Cover them completely with water and set in the microwave. I always either put a paper plate or paper towels underneath the tupperware because the water does tend to boil over the top from time to time. For 1/2 lbs of pasta I usually set the microwave to 14 minutes on high.

Step 2: For some reason it seems that everytime I cook pasta in the microwave I end up with the tupperware being covered in some kind of sticky substance. I’m not really sure what it is, but I’m thinking its some weird by product of the starch being cooked by the microwave. Don’t worry though, I usually just run water over the pasta and put it either in a new tupperware dish or a microwavable bowl.

Step 3: Take one or two links of sausage from your package and take a fork or knife to poke holes in the casing of each sausage. This will allow a lot of the grease to come out when cooking. Throw them on the already heated George Foreman grill and allow to cook thoroughly for around 8-10 minutes. Your sausage might be a little crispy on the sides that are touching the grill, so if you have the time you can grill them for probably around 20 minutes or so without putting the top of the grill down. I really don’t mind the crispiness though and I usually just go for the quicker route.

Alternative Step 3: If you don’t have a George Foreman grill you can always get precooked sausage instead. I don’t mean hot dogs either, look at a package of any kind of sausage and if it is precooked then it will state it on the label. This just means that the sausage is already cooked and it really only needs to be heated up in order to eat. So all you have to do for step three is take out a link or two of sausage and pop it in the microwave for 3-4 minutes. I would definitely poke holes in the sausage here as well. I know a microwave cooks things from the inside out, so you don’t want any exploding sausages on your hands.

Step 4: Once the sausage is done grilling I usually take it out and cut it up into quarter inch pieces and throw it on top of the pasta. I then put about a cup of the pasta sauce and pour that on top of the spaghetti and sausage.

Step 5: Stir everything up together and put it back in the microwave for about a minute. This will allow the sauce to heat up and also pick up some flavor for the sausage.

Step 6: You can cover with some Parmesan cheese if you have any, though it’s not necessary.

Enjoy!

I was thinking of starting a blog to keep track of the random stuff I cook in the dorm room. My roommate and I are both over weight and we decided to start losing some of the pounds at the beginning of this semester. I started out at 331 and he started out at around 264 I believe. So far I’m down to 299 and he is down to 229.

The way we accomplished this is by buying a George Foreman grill and making smarter decisions at the grocery store. All semester we have been grilling and microwaving in order to avoid the plethora of fast food surrounding us.

I would say most of the recipes are pretty common and not very special, aside from the fact that we use a microwave and a GF grill to make it. So the recipes might not be very original, more of an inspiration for what you can do with a very small assortment of cooking tools.

NOTES
If you DO have a kitchen in your dorm/apartment, you really don’t have to use a George Foreman grill for any of my recipes. You can definitely just cook it in a pot/pan. The only benefit of the GF grill is that when I cook fatty meats, all the grease/fat will drain off. But it definitely isn’t as flexible as a pot or pan and I would much rather use that if I had the option.

Anyways, My next post will contain my first recipe that I’m going to make tonight.