Schwäbische Kartoffelsuppe

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy 4 to 5 litre soup pot
• •Potato masher or sturdy wooden spoon
• •Sharp knife and cutting board

Instructions

1. 1

   Sweat the roots

   Warm the butter, lard, or oil in a heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onion, leek, carrots, celeriac, and parsley root with a small pinch of salt and cook 8 to 10 minutes, stirring often, until the onion turns glassy and the roots smell sweet. Do not brown them hard. This soup wants the cellar sweetness of stored roots, not scorched onion shouting over the broth.

   Cut the roots small and the potatoes larger. The roots should soften into the broth; the potatoes should still leave you something to bite.
2. 2

   Add potato

   Stir in the potato chunks, marjoram, nutmeg, and bay leaf, then let the potatoes roll around in the fat for two minutes. The fat coats the surface and carries the marjoram into the soup, so the herb tastes cooked into the bowl instead of sprinkled on top like an apology.

3. 3

   Simmer gently

   Pour in the beef broth and scrape the bottom of the pot clean. Bring it just to a simmer, then runter mit der Temperatur, down with the temperature, and cook uncovered for about 25 minutes, until the potato edges break when pressed with a spoon. A hard boil beats the vegetables ragged and clouds the broth; a steady simmer lets the floury potatoes give up starch without turning the pot muddy.

4. 4

   Crush, do not blend

   Remove the bay leaf. Crush about a third of the potatoes against the side of the pot with a spoon or potato masher, leaving the rest chunky. This is the step that decides the soup. A blender shears the starch and makes glue; hand-crushed floury potato thickens the beef broth while the bowl still eats like soup.

5. 5

   Warm the extras

   If using Saitenwürstle, lay them into the soup whole or sliced and warm them gently for 6 to 8 minutes. If using cooked Spätzle, stir them in for the last 3 minutes only. Do not boil either one. The sausage splits and dumps its salt, and the Spätzle drinks the broth until the pot forgets it was soup.

6. 6

   Finish bright

   Stir in the vinegar, parsley, and chives, then taste for salt and pepper after the sausage has warmed through. Würzen, Fett, Salz zum Schluss, season, fat, salt at the end. Beef broth and sausage both carry salt, so the last taste is the only honest one. Serve with rye bread and mustard on the side if sausages are in the bowl.

Chef Tips

• •Use floury potatoes, the kind that fall apart when boiled. Waxy potatoes stay polite and separate; they will never give the broth the body this soup needs.
• •Cook the vegetables gently before the broth goes in. That slow sweating turns onion and roots sweet without browning them, and the soup tastes round instead of raw.
• •Use beef broth with body, homemade if you have it or good butcher's stock if you don't. A cube gives salt and colour, not the mouthfeel that bones give. Nicht aus dem Glas.
• •Add the vinegar at the end. Acid cooked for half an hour disappears; acid added at the finish wakes up the potato and keeps the soup from eating flat.
• •Saitenwürstle are warmed, not boiled. Treat them roughly and they split, which is the sausage telling you it has had enough.

Advance Preparation

• •The soup base can be cooked one day ahead through the crushing step. Cool it quickly, refrigerate it, and reheat gently with a splash of broth because potato thickens as it stands.
• •Add Saitenwürstle, Spätzle, parsley, chives, and vinegar only when serving. They are finishers, not storage ingredients.
• •Leftovers keep 3 days in the refrigerator. Reheat over low heat and loosen with broth or water; hard boiling leftover potato soup makes it heavy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 490g)