Sweet Potato Soup

I keep a stock of this in my freezer at all times. And it’s one of those recipes that has a lot of leeway as far as the ingredients.

INGREDIENTS:

3 large sweet potatoes	Black pepper to taste
*3 (14-oz) cans chicken broth (just over 5 cups)	Orange zest to taste (opt--changes the texture a bit)
1/4 cup brown sugar, or more to taste	Cayenne pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt (to taste)	**1/3 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

*I prefer to use about 1½ C chicken or turkey broth with the rest as milk, and maybe some orange juice.

**I don’t usually have heavy cream on hand (because if I did, I’d put it in everything!). So you can substitute half and half, whole milk, or 2 Tbsp or so of butter. It will taste different, but still very good. As I said, the ingredients are really here just to make it taste good. So you can add or subtract whatever suits you, as long as you end up with the consistency of soup you like.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

2. Bake sweet potatoes in preheated oven until soft, about 1 1/2 hours (you can also use a microwave). Remove and let cool slightly.

3. Peel sweet potatoes, and puree with chicken broth in batches, using enough chicken broth so that it purees smoothly. Bring puree to a simmer in a large saucepan over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to medium-low. Stir in the sugar, salt, nutmeg, black pepper, orange zest, and cayenne pepper; cover, and let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat, and stir in cream.