welcome friends today on the channel we are going to make something that I never
thought in a million years I would ever make for you it is a look deep and dark
into one of my guilty pleasures and so the impetus for showing you this comes
from a couple of weeks ago one of my cousins in Arkansas texted me a picture
of a handwritten recipe called aunt Pat's Weiner soup so aunt Pat was my mom
and I'd never seen the recipe written down this was the first time I'd ever
seen it written down and it's a recipe that I've been making my entire life and
so we sort of figured that this was written down 1976 or 1978 somewhere in
there so I would have been 10 or 12 years old at that point I would have
already been making this on my own on weekends not a fantastic soup but
it's still something to this day that I make even though it's probably not the
best thing it just brings me comfort on those days you know when you're when
you're starting to feel sick like you've got a cold right into this pan I put a
little bit of butter and some diced onion and diced celery and we don't want
to brown it we just want to soften it and because I've never seen it written
down it was very interesting to me to look at this recipe and say I've only
ever made this from memory of what I thought I saw my mother doing and
obviously one of my cousin's sat down watched my mother make it and wrote it
out and my memory has shifted over the years of what this soup was and what I
make has changed from what is written down but it's still essentially the same
it's still package of hot dogs and a couple of cans of mushroom soup with
potatoes and corn mixed in and you know yeah I hear you but you know what
somehow it all comes together and it tastes great now I don't know where my
mother got this from I've always assumed that it was a recipe that Campbell Soup
put out in order to sell soup but who knows so you take wieners and you just
chop them up a little bit over the years I have tried you know expensive hot dogs
or expensive wieners you know the really really good ones but time and time again
I've come back to using just the no-name wieners there's something about the
flavor that I just find fantastically comforting
so I've chopped up some of them and I'm gonna put these in with the celery and
the onion and just continue cooking that down to soften it and then I'll chop up
the rest of these hot dogs okay so this looks like it softened up nicely next
goes some corn I'm using frozen corn I noticed that in the written recipe my
mother would have used canned corn and canned corn would be perfect in this so
there we go we've got a nice mixture of corn in there I put in some cracked
black pepper
now the written down recipe says to put in salt somewhere along the line I have
stopped putting salty and I find that between the wieners and the soup and the
salt that I put in with the potatoes it's salty enough for me if you find
that it needs some salt certainly go ahead and put some in now we come to the
soup cream of mushroom soup two cans of cream of mushroom soup somewhere along
the lines I switched from two cans of cream of mushroom to one can of cream of
mushroom and one can of cream of celery
but you know when I went to the store to get the ingredients to make this recipe
there was no cream celery and I was kind of surprised I don't buy a lot of canned
soup anymore and I guess that in general is something that's happening in the
marketplace and I was amazed at how few choices there were anymore
for canned soups so if you're a lover of canned soup you must be pulling your
hair out I know there's two or three that I do eat regularly or I keep in my
emergency cupboard for you know just to have but man that there's really not
much out there anymore I guess everyone's moving to what they think are
healthier options which aren't always healthier so in go the two cans of soup
next in two cans of milk
oh just stir that together looking good so in this pot I have some potatoes that
I have I've done a small dice and then just boiled them in salt and peppered
water if it was pasta you would say al dente you don't want them cooked until
they're fully cooked or mushy you still want to have a little bit of bite
because they're gonna cook more in this soup and you don't want them to fully
disintegrate stir that in and now go in the rest of the weiners or hot dogs
I don't know what do you say where you live wieners or hot dogs packaging here
kind of uses both words and then of course we've got French and English
together so that adds sometimes to the confusion am i reading the French side
of the package or am i reading the English side of the package you reach a
point where you just don't know anymore and it's just all natural so stir that
in now last ingredient for me is hot sauce and over the years it's been
Tabasco it's been Franks red hot it's been a bunch of different types of
pepper sauce Julie doesn't really like this soup too much so she will put in
sriracha which is great if you like sriracha put that in as well and for me
that's it it's done now we just sort of heat it through and bring all of the
flavors together the written recipe from my mom she would have added carrots and
you know what racking my brain for the life of me I do not remember carrots
being in it and that's kind of to me that's part of cooking and that's why
traditional or authentic are difficult words for me to use because you your
memory changes over time and what you think today is authentic could be
completely different from what you did 20 or 30 years ago which is very
interesting to me now you can finish this my mom would finish it with a
couple more tablespoons of butter might be a little bit too much today I no
longer do that I think it's kind of funny she says to
put in one tomato chopped up my mom would put tomato in everything didn't
matter what it was if she could put a tomato in that recipe she would put a
tomato in that recipe and parsley a few sprigs of parsley on top when you serve
it so I don't do any of those anymore but I think it's a little bit too thick
so I might add a little extra milk
so mm-hmm yeah this is something that just makes
me smile it's so simple it's kind of almost maybe sort of good for you but
it's certainly not something that you would want to eat every week even though
there were times in university where I probably did eat this every week this
just takes me back and comfort food I mean every once in a while you need to
find a comfort food that just makes you feel like you're having a warm hug and
this is one of those things that does it for me hmm so now this isn't a soup that
you need to simmer for a very long time once it's brought up the temperature
it's ready to eat but just like almost every soup that
you've ever made in your life stick this in the fridge and tomorrow or the next
day it's gonna be way better all of the flavors come together and it's really
good so there you go one of my darkest culinary secrets hot dog soup or Weiner
soup I love it give it a try if you're brave enough you might love it too
thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you