Mashed potato soup with Cheddar

 

This recipe was designed to make use of Thanksgiving leftovers, from mashed potatoes to turkey stock. It's certainly a fine use of leftover mashed potatoes, but if you don't have any, using some from the refrigerator case or deli at the grocery store would work.

Spicy Cheddar mashed potato soup
Adapted from Food & Wine magazine’s  2001 Cookbook. The recipe did not specify the amount of cayenne. I kept sprinkling on more and I’m not sure I ever got it to any stage where it would qualify as spicy, so don’t be afraid to be liberal with it. Serves 4 to 6 depending on whether you’re using it as a smaller first course or more of a main at lunch.

Ingredients
4 cups mashed potatoes
1½ cup heavy cream
3¾ cup broth
1 teaspoon onion powder
Cayenne, salt and pepper
¾ cup shredded Cheddar cheese
Chopped green onion or chives for garnish

Method
Combine mashed potatoes and cream in a large sauce pot. Heat through and add broth, onion powder, and cayenne, salt and pepper to taste.  Heat through. Serve garnished with chopped onions or chives.

Rating: This makes a nice soup that's super fast to make and reheats well. With that much cream and broth, it's more liquid and less gluey than some potato soups can be, with none of that mealy, spoon-coating mouthfeel. Spicy, it was not, at least as I made it, despite getting fairly reckless with the cayenne jar shaker when taste-testing found it still quite bland. I found adding the onion powder helped amp up the flavor in a more useful way and made it less one dimensional.It's sort of a blank slate as a recipe base that you can flavor as you like. I found I preferred chives as the garnish over the green onions called for. Certainly a viable option for leftover mashed potatoes, although I've never thought leftover mashed potatoes were a problem that needed solving by anything other than heating them up with a tad more butter.