A Simple and Basic Creamy Garlic Potato Soup

2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 cups broth (chicken or vegetable)
2 cups milk (sub some out with cream if you like)
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 a large red onion, diced
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
1 tbl butter

Saute the onions in the butter over medium heat, till they are soft. Add the garlic and the bay leaf and saute for another 30 seconds to a minute. Add the broth, potatoes and milk. Reduce heat to low and let simmer, stirring occasionally, till the potatoes are done. About 30-40 minutes. Remove it from the heat and blend it with an immersion blender. Serve hot with some kind of topping.

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I had never made potato soup before this. Can you believe it? I can't, especially now that I know how easy it is. I hadn't made one of the greatest comfort foods! The mind boggles. Anyway, this recipe is adapted from a couple different ones around the net, changed up to suit my tastes. It's thicker than average (most called for at least five cups of liquid), because I like it thick. I didn't add any additional things to it, except some cheese at the end, because I wanted to start with a blank canvas, so to speak. This soup is great partly because you can add whatever you want to it and partly because it's good just how it is. It's also very rich and creamy with just 2% milk. So it's even low fat! Of course it would be better with some heavy cream, but what isn't? Heh.

First, I got my ingredients together and took a really bad set of pictures. I'm not even going to show them. You're going to have to take my word that I prepped all the veggies, dicing the onion, mincing the garlic and cubing/peeling the potatoes. One other thing that would be good would be to do half and half carrots and potatoes. You would just want to cut the carrots a little smaller, since they cook more slowly. Anyway, then I browned up the onion. Once it was browned I tossed in the garlic and bay leaf. I used two really big cloves for this and it could have used more, in my opinion. Just so you know. Once the garlic was sauteed a bit I poured in the broth, added the potatoes and then the milk. I figured it wouldn't be good to add the milk first since dairy can be delicate and adding the broth would cool everything down. Then I just let everything simmer till it was tender. I don't remember exactly how long it took, I forgot to pay attention. Sorry about that. But once it was done it was time to smooth it out. You'll want to pull out the bay leaf first though. I first tried using a potato masher. It was woefully inadequate. So I just whipped out the immersion blender and that did the trick. Some salt and pepper and that's it, a basic creamy potato soup. Now you can add anything to it you can think of: cheese, bacon, chicken, zucchini, parsley, mushrooms (if you really wanted to), pepperoni, chives, raw onion, broccoli, cilantro, peppers, more cheese, sour cream, nuts, carrots, sweet potato, sunflower seeds, corn, meatballs, whatever you like. So what would you add?