Some might argue that the best time of year for making soup is when the temperatures turn frigid — then you have people like Martha Stewart who are ready to whip up a good bowl at any point in the season. From a classic chicken noodle to a spicy tortilla soup with black beans, we turn to Stewart’s cooking advice whenever we’re in the mood for something homemade. Martha Stewart tends to encourage home chefs to get experimental with their soup recipes, swapping ingredients for whatever’s in season, but not when it comes to her family’s Polish heirloom soup: Buttermilk Potato Onion Soup.
“It is extremely simple and extremely peasant-y,” Stewart told CBS Sunday Morning in a TikTok video. To make Stewart’s soup, begin by boiling or steaming potatoes until they’re fork-tender. She notes that variety isn’t important, among her other 11 tips for making soup. Once the potatoes are soft and warm, cut out defects as you peel the skin, then put them aside to prepare the onions. Finely slice your onions and saute with butter, olive oil, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Grab a deep-set bowl and place three or four of those hot, uncut, unsliced potatoes in the center, topping with a hearty serving of the sauteed onions. Pour cold buttermilk around the potatoes in the bowl, sprinkle with a few sprigs of fresh dill, and you’re ready to enjoy.
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A soup passed down through generations and across oceans
Martha Stewart’s Buttermilk Potato Onion Soup joined the list of recipes debuted in her 2024 book, “Martha: The Cookbook” (one of the 15 absolute best Martha Stewart cookbooks), commemorating her 100th publication. The recipe had been passed down through the women in her family for several generations before she decided to share it with the world, with Stewart calling it “one of [her] favorite soups.” On TikTok, she shared that her grandmother immigrated to America from Poland in the early 20th century, and taught the recipe to Stewart’s mother, who eventually taught it to her.
There’s a similar Polish soup known as chłodnik ogórkowy, which is also served with cold buttermilk as a broth, but that soup features cucumbers instead of potatoes. Stewart’s version of the recipe also exists in other variations out there on the internet, but these renditions call for dicing the potatoes, adding different spices, using chicken stock, or even pureeing the whole soup — almost the complete opposite of Stewart’s soup, which calls for basic ingredients, whole potatoes, and a much easier soup-making process in general. Stewart’s Buttermilk Potato Onion Soup could easily join our list of 41 of the best soup recipes, bringing just the right amount of “Slavic flavor,” as Stewart calls it, to the broad list.
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Read the original article on Tasting Table.
Dining and Cooking