Winter Survival Food: Potato Soup
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- čas přidán 30. 12. 2023
- Potatoes were an extremely important nutritional resource for folks in the 18th century. Whether for livestock or the household, they could fill the belly for very cheap. They were often used to stretch more expensive ingredients along. Not only were potatoes a vital survival food for households and homesteads, they were among the most common foods given to the poor.
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Did ships crossing the Ocean ever catch fish?
I need to say thank you for the onion recipe. The one with just onions and salt, baked. Ran out of everything this Christmas, had only onions and salt. NYC is an expensive town, inflation, plus my own financial mistakes... basically, yeah. Anyhow, that was a superior recipe to just raw onions for Christmas. Thank you ! Baked onions was the bomb ! Cheers
I love this new guy and the old guy as well.
I was raised in a very poor family. Our staple diet was potatoes, cabbage, onions and garlic. You can make a million meals and feed an army with those. My mom fed our family of 6 kids, 2 adults with it.
And cooked properly absolutely delicious in all the variations.
that house must have stunk lol
Thanks to modern agriculture, these things are plentiful and cheap. The Irish starved when their potato crop was ruined by blight.
I'm sorry you had such a harsh time, but you sound as if you're a wonderful person, and that you look back on your upbringing with happiness. In the things which really count, you seem to have been blessed.
if you can afford beef, corned beef or a roast fits right in.
Love that you addressed the “simpler times” comments. Nothing simple about survival. Love your guys videos!
Yes Ithink its coming that we going to the basic,and this meal helpit us greetings from the Nederlands.
Having taken care of our "lower needs" in the hierarchy, it's easy to become confused about what's important in life, if today's discourse is anything to go by.
IT kinda IS, survival IS survival, now WE have to also Fight with Like 5 different places at the Same time in addition to that. IS IT safer and in a way Wasser to survive now? Yeah, but that does Not Change that Things where simpler Back then and more complex now. If you where starving Back then, you where starving, simple AS that
Absolutely. Even using the bathroom wasn't simple
We conflate simple with easy. They were simpler, in the general sense but I’m not about to trade today for yesterday.
My Grandma was born in the Soviet Union in the late 1950's, more specifically in Belarus. She still makes a Potato soup that has been passed on throughout our family for generations, since before the Russian Revolution even. It's quite crazy how through all the changes throughout history with countries and ideologies and politics, a lot of foods have remained absolute staples.
The soil and the climate will dictate what you can grow. New ideologies and political winds can't change that. Not for lack of trying, as many a famine has occurred because "the new management" started meddling with what the people of the soil should do or not do.
What grows in the ground doesn't care about how the local authorities want you to vote.
My mother made potato soup came from my grandmother, from Great grandmother from Switzerland. It was my favorite
Are you willing to share a recipe? :)
Soviet Onion
Today are the “simpler times.” Food is plentiful, cheap, and easily accessible. Your point about the 18th century not being a simpler time is spot on. If you didn’t know what to grow, how to grow it, how to store it, and how to use it, you starved. Today, there are so many layers to our society that helps to provide for everyone that the notion of starving is foreign to us. Great work! Thanks
I think when people say simpler times they're referring to laws and government regulation. They were a lot simpler back then, now we've got tons of stupid petty laws that do nothing but put up red tape for those trying to live a happy life.
@@sirraf23 As a counterpoint you could die from a bad batch of alcohol or milk in the 18th century. Regulations came about for a reason. The fact that you can go into a grocery store and there's limitless food that's safe to eat or water to drink in your home is a miracle
@@kpwillson yeah but that's less likely to happen if you're growing your own vegetables and raising your own livestock. Just one milk cow would suffice an entire family and it's easy to make sure they don't eat anything they shouldn't. Alcohol is another story but I think most families knew how to brew their own beers.
@sirraf23 but what if your cow gets sick? Or you dont keep milking, or it stops producing? You need a guy with a bull... or maybe its now too old. There goes your milk, cheese, yogurt...
Same with fermentation and distillation. Ive made a number of home brews, my first batch went off without a hitch. Then i got a little sloppy or stopped reading the steps and thinking i had it down... i made a batch that ran away fermentation and popped! a batch that never stopped bubbling... fermentation is a dangerous game, and sometimes it may not start properly and youve got a big vat of wet spoiled grain full of bacteria.
KNOWING how to do these things is important to basic survival.
@@Robb1977 difference between you and them is you can throw out your mistakes but theirs was essential to their family's survival. I bet that made them pay a lot more attention to the details of what they were doing with their food.
A method to make the soup base a bit heartier, the way my great grandmother made it, was to boil half the potatoes first to have them broken all the way way down, and the 2nd half thrown in right as first half was just about broken down. So you'd have chunks of cooked potatoes with a nice thick soup base. These days I can't have it any other way
As someone who loves a lot of thick soups with potatoes (NE Clam Chowder and potato leek) this intrigues me. It seems like you would want to use more potatoes than the recipe normally calls for... I'm thinking three pounds for most recipes
That sounds like a good idea, nice and creamy but will still have some chunks of potato, the best of both worlds!
I grate them on the shredder and start it with that first. Same concept. And agree it makes it thicker! 👍 plus I use heavy cream at the end. Yummy
Just take a look at german potatoe soup - "Kartoffelsuppe" - one of the best dishes of my childhood in cold seasons.
You can also just use a roux to make a thicker soup
A dish that was very popular up here in the times of the Vikings, that is still popular today, is "lapskaus". Which is basically a soup made with any vegetables you have available, plus whatever meat you have. The Vikings didnt have potatoes, but grew turnips, cabbage etc. And when the potatoe arrived, it became a very important part of "lapskaus".
It is popular in the north west of England too. It's why people from Liverpool are called 'scousers'.
Wonder if that word is related to lobscouse.
@@lordrevan57 Yes, it's just basically the anglicised version of lapskaus. I think the dish was introduced to Liverpool through the docks. Ships from Scandinavia would arrive there frequently.
@@lordrevan57 Yes, the two are related.
Labskaus were also a common dish in Mekklenburg-Pommerania. 😊
More of this guy please. He’s so pleasant to listen to and I love the way he’s passionate about the common folk’s hardy meals. 😊
He does a lot of the blacksmithing videos. Great stuff.
My parents were germans born and raised in Kazakhstan. They grew up in poor conditions in the 60's and 70's. They lived mostly self-sustained having chickens, cows und pigs. To this day they make a special dish called "Kartoffelwurst" (potato-sausage). It's just a sausage casing filled with diced pork and diced potatoes. Always baffles me how good it tastes.
"kiszka ziemniaczana" is proper good, like a potato-cheese dumpling but a bit different in a good way.
Қазақстаннан баршаңызға сәлем 😊🇰🇿
I hope they taught you how to cook that dish and more of your heritage.
In the Philippines, we have a dish called Nilaga, which is basically the same premise. Beef, potatoes, carrots and cabbage are the staple, with the broth seasoned by fish sauce or soy sauce to add some flavor to it. Was a dish with great flavor that can easily fill a family with leftovers to spare!
The potato soup Ryan prepared looked so similar to what I had very regularly having been born to Filipino Parents while being raised in the US.
Love to see the similarities! Happy New Year Townsends and co!
Oooh, I need to try the soy sauce seasoning next time I make a potato soup!
Good with rice 🍚. 🇵🇭
Guess what we're havin' for dinner
I used to live in Manila for work and enjoyed Nilagang baka/baboy.
I grew up in an Ilocano household. We call it Lauya. Bones are usually left in the soup.
In Ontario one of the stories we read in school was of a family starving in the winter and all they have left are the seed potatoes for planting in the spring. It haunts me yet. Mom said that they ate a lot of boiled onions.
My great aunt and uncle told me that when some of our ancestors came to Northern Ontario from Switzerland in the 1880’s they were resorting to boiling dried leaves by the end of the first winter.
@@robertpearson8798Teas made from local leaves and herbs were one of the main ways the First Nations people and the French survived through Canadian winter.
The ones who had forests or woods with mushrooms were the ones who got really lucky ... you can make vegetarian beef bourguignon out of certain mushrooms and some of them taste like chicken .Chaga makes a powerful tea that has kept starving people alive in Winters .
And yes you can make all kinds of teas from the different things including pine needles which will give you vitamin C and there's all kinds of things they could have harvested in the fields and woods that they could have added to their root cellar to hold through the winter , chickweed was plentiful they could have had dried chickweed , plantain , and other big leafy things growing outside on the ground that they could have dried and added to their soups and casseroles and other recipes for more flavor and vitamins .
A number of them would have had maple trees nearby and they could have taken that sap and just drinking that alone when it looks like water is very healthy for you and they could have boiled it and made pancake syrup to use as sweetener .
Also back then there were a lot of chestnut trees and those chestnuts are actually pretty meaty ... they would have harvested those in autumn , and they would have had walnuts .
And here's a mind blower many of them would have actually had something that would have made a tea or a beverage that was the equivalent of mild liquid ecstasy .
You look at the history of sassafras your mind will be blown because it's actually one of the main things that they were coming to America for .
They were making beers and teas of it .
You take the root of the tree and I think it has to be harvested only in Autumn or winter ... ?
But that is what ecstasy originally was made from .
Problem is there aren't many of those trees left here in America and if you go to buy sassafras now they extract the Ecstasy out of it in most cases because the government did something really shity and sneaky sometime around maybe 45 years ago they declared ecstasy a carcinogen which is BS .
So then the government could have all the access to it to profit off of and sell to pharmaceutical companies .
When I was around 13 I used to drink sassafras tea and this was before the government had that mandate and I loved it and I didn't know why it always made me just feel good ... I was always a big tea drinker but Realty and I couldn't understand why sassafras was the only herbal tea I actually genuinely enjoyed .
One day when I was in the woods I bumped into this tree behind me and thought it looked effed up because it had 3 different types of leaves , No Lie , 3 different types of leaves and when I looked it up later it turned out to be a tall old sassafras tree ... and I heard they take about 30 years minimum to get to the point where the root is tasting good and has the E .
But back then I was going in different Woods a lot and so I don't know where that tree was .
Look at the history of the sassafras tree especially with respect to the colonial era
Yup...this is VERY familiar. I grew up in a poor family as well. Potato soup was a common meal for us as well. Potatoes, onions, and 1 lb of pork sausage fed the whole family of 8. My mom would use a LOT of black pepper in it to give it more flavor. I've made this for my kids as well, and they enjoyed it.
We got either venison I shot or when iwlt was really tight just the soup bones mom saved. The 90s in rural America weren't much different than any time before. No electricity, no indoor plumbing but we survived.
@@cult_of_odin Oh yeah...same here. We did a LOT of fishing in the spring/summer/fall, and a lot of it ended up in the freezer. We always had a 1 acre garden that provided the vast majority of the food we ate year round.
From a farmer family and potatoes has been the go to all my life. Such a versatile root fruit.
Potatoes and leek soup is still one of my absolute favourites!
I grew up in a very large family on a farm in Idaho. We weren’t poor really but there were many mouths to feed. Potatoes were a very important part of what we consumed. We had a root cellar with a significant portion dedicated to the storage of potatoes for the winter. My mom was a great cook and included potatoes in most meals in so many different ways.
Potatoes are a fantastic way to make resources stretch. I’m also in Idaho and at least once every harvest season there is a tipped truck or potatoes spilled somewhere that the farmers need cleaned up. They will give them to whoever is willing to gather them up.
Is there fear of the toxic gases they emit? I remember reading an entire Russian family dying from the toxic gas in their potato cellar.
@@Lekirius If you store them properly, you'll be ok. But yes, when they break down they can produce enough toxic gas to kill adult humans in a closed space.
I'm glad you called out the people pining for the 'simpler times'. More often than not they don't have the first clue about how hard things were back then.
And considering how crazy people went during the Pandemic lockdown, I find it very difficult to believe they'd survive a single winter in these times.
imagine spending months inside your one-room log cabin or sod house, with only your immediate family for company, and only such books, handcrafted games, and musical instruments you might have on hand for entertainment while the winter rages outside. Most of us would go stir crazy.
we have much to be grateful for these days... we also have lost a lot through modern conveniences. Hard to say what the right balance is or was.
Don't get too mad at them, I think a lot of people who romanticise the "simpler times" are just weary of the way modern life is structured, cramped spaces surrounded by people, controlled by employers and governments and institutions, everything is so fast paced and saturated with rules now, it's just the perfect storm when you force people into stressful, compressed living spaces and make them overthink at the same time.
I admit, I am personally at my happiest when I am just toiling on simple things, like cooking or gardening. They make me a lot happier than leisure activities
simpler =/= easier
there is simplicity in living close to the land. You don't harvest enough food, you die.
it's actually the convenience and comfort of modern life that drives us to romanticize such struggle. Our problems are quite different --- everything is bureaucratized, feminized, pinned down to a rule and a set of standards.
the open frontier looks quite inviting in contrast. Untouched land, self-reliance, great challenges with accompanying great risks. Though obviously when you're freezing to death you might want your paternalistic rules-based order and your meaningless 9 to 5 back.
I don't think these people are being disingenuous though (I am one of them). Certainly there's a "grass is always greener" aspect to it, but there's also a type of person that is not cut out for modern cubicle life.
I'd say simple =/= easy.
Times were simpler in that everything you did was about surviving and nothing else. You had one goal, one requirement. It would be wrong to say times were easy. Therefore simple, but not easy.
Ryan, you are a great storyteller. You definitely have a knack for it.
I grew up in an Irish family. Potatoes everyday, sometimes more than once. Love potatoes ❤
Вы не представляете, как любят картофель в России. Спросите каждого и кажый первый вам ответит, что его любимое блюдо - жаренная картошка. Жаренная картошка, это не картошка фри. Картошки фри жарится в масле, прямо окунается в него. А жаренная картошка жарится с не большим добавлением масла, как если бы вы жарили гуляшь.
@@ZorroZorroZorro ask any eastern european for potato and you will be served one mllion ways of preparing potato
@@MattSuguisAsFondAsEverrr Так и есть ))
My granny was raised during the great depression and made me a potato soup she called poor man's soup. It was cubed potatoes, cream cheese and dill weed. It was simple, cheap and delicious.
Another option is to boil the potatoes and mash them, creating a thick soup, and to use finely diced bacon or ham instead of beef. The resulting soup is thick and hearty, and keeps well in cold climates. Servings can be bulked out with milk, if available.
Brilliant idea. My pops always used a bit of flower to thicken it up nice
Why not move south, by the ocean?
Bacon and potato chowder.
A bit of cheese would make that delicious. 😛
Suggestion: Mash about 1/3 of the potatoes, leaving the rest in solid chunks. This will thicken while still leaving the bite-sized pieces to go along with the meat. :)
Potato and leek soup is good too, for a vegetarian version. I enjoy your videos and I like that you give a realistic view of the past rather than over-romanticized. We do take a lot of things for granted today, like grocery stores with “seasonal” foods available year-round, freezers and refrigerators, gas stoves, etc.
👍
This channel is my favourite on CZcams. Wholesome, informative, consistent and entertaining. I usually spend an age in the comments because the community is wonderful with amazing stories and nuggets of information. Thank you Townsends and everyone who follows you.
You know this is why i love this channel, because potato soup (simple not loaded) was also my family's winter survival food. Our recipe is really different and takes advantage of some of the modern amenities (like bullion cubes, canned foods, etc) but the biggest difference for us was using ham instead of beef because ham is generally cheaper here in VA than beef. Its nice to think that if I look to the past, my family might've still been eating the same thing as me.
Yep. I always save that ham bone for this.
Doubt it. Your family line in the past knew the truth…the pig was to have on the farm to eat trash, not to eat…GOD says do not eat pork! But today…
I use ham (for soups, cooking) packaged as “Bits & Pieces” off to the very side in the meat section. I found it by accident - now I look for it!
It's these tidbits of context, like the minutiae about what Scrooge was probably eating, that make Townsends so distinctly special.
Hope to see you in good health and spirit in the year 2024.
Thank you for the great infotainment ❤
Gotta love the potato. The Irish depended on them after they were imported. Families prospered from the new crop until the blight. No matter what soup I make I include potatoes if I have them, you can't go wrong. Even out skiing on a winter day, a cold baked potato is an excellent snack.
Depended because the English wouldn’t let them have anything else.
We Kids didn’t know we were poor. Every other family I knew were just like us. We made about half of the toys we played with and we were told to come home when the street lights came on and other wise wandered all over town and the country side around it. It was a good childhood for me.
Different kinds of potato soups are a staple in Finnish cuisine to this day! Very cheap and easy to prepare, my favourite is sausage soup made of potatos, carrots and a cheap sausage (for example a hot dog style sausage), seasoned with salt and black pepper. Lots of chance for variation: chicken, pork, beef, sausage, minced meat, moose, fish... And if you just add different kind of veggies (that are in season, traditionally) and pass the meat, you get "kesäkeitto", literally translated as "summer soup"! And the best part of the soup is that if you make a big batch, it gets even better when heated again the next day!
Makkarakeitto. It was really good.
@@MarkErikEE Probably my favourite food ever!
POTATO IS NATIVE ONLY TO PERU , WHERE THERE ARE OVER 3000 VARITIES, THE INCAS ENGINEERS ADAPTED THIS POISINOUS PLANT TO BE EDIBLE. AMAZING THAT THANKS TO THE PERUVIANS , THE EUROPEANS SURVIVED STARVATION!
The Danish Vikings had a similar concept (though potatoes weren't in their inventory, for obvious reasons) with grain, meat, herbs and seasonal vegetables. It was a sign of wealth when the pot was never emptied, but just served as the base for the next day. It was a point to brag about, especially, if you made it though winter without having to start with an empty pot.
My granny still cooked this way until her dying day. If they were lucky and happened to kill a rabbit or other game, it could be added easily to convert this to a stew, but either way it's still a reasonably hearty meal.
I can remember going to my Great grandma's in Eastern KY in the late 70's and till the day she died, she had on her wood fired stove at all times, a big pot of pinto or navy beans with a ham hock and a big cast iron skillet of cornbread. If you were hungry, oh man 😋
POTATO IS NATIVE ONLY TO PERU , WHERE THERE ARE OVER 3000 VARITIES, THE INCAS ENGINEERS ADAPTED THIS POISINOUS PLANT TO BE EDIBLE. AMAZING THAT THANKS TO THE PERUVIANS , THE EUROPEANS SURVIVED STARVATION!
Its amazing how every country has cuisine that often has a story to tell.
I watched one on asian stir fry and they told how theirs came to be because of lack of protein and energy for cooking it. Wood being scares they learned to cook it hot and fast.
I have been watching this channel for years and recently I have seen such a boost in the quality of these videos. I say so because I can really feel the passion showing through in the writing, editing, camerawork, etc., like yall figured out how to use all of that to make us feel the passion that you feel when doing this stuff. Really happy to see the channel flourishing so much!
When potatoes established in Czech lands potato soup became a staple of many regions alongside cabbage and garlic soups. Similar to what you describe here, but often mushrooms and garlic were added for more flavor. Less meat was used when preparing these soups, as it generally was a lot more expensive than the rest of the ingredients. Soups and stews sustained many families for a vast amount of history, at the very least in Czech lands so it was no surprise that when this wonder crop that is the potato arrived, it bacame part of many of the recipes, including these three soups.
Funnily enough, as you said, potatoes were often ignored by the higher classes, which is quite funny considering many of these higher classes were the reason why potatoes ever arrived to Czechia
POTATO IS NATIVE ONLY TO PERU , WHERE THERE ARE OVER 3000 VARITIES, THE INCAS ENGINEERS ADAPTED THIS POISINOUS PLANT TO BE EDIBLE. AMAZING THAT THANKS TO THE PERUVIANS , THE EUROPEANS SURVIVED STARVATION!
Dobry den, much love from this mancunian English man who once lived in your beautiful country with its warm friendly people and amazing food
Potatoes are relatively easy to grow, even in poor soil and bad weather. If a year was too cold and wet to grow wheat and rye successfully, potatoes could still be harvested. 1816, "The year without a summer" would have been even harsher, if potatoes hadn't been established in Europe.
Only 5 potatoes out of the 6000 varities in Peru were easy to grow worldwide. @@andreabartels3176
theres a legend (I think it is, atleast) in Prussia that Frederick the Great (known as the potato king) popularized the whole thing that potatos are a noble's food. He then intentionally made it easier for prussian farmers to steal them from farms so it becomes popularized to everyone (potatoes have just been imported so naturally, most people are wary of it). Thats why he was also called the potato king.
As everywhere, In Poland potatoes were staple food of poor families. Potato soup is still eaten and popular, though it usually serves as a base for making more elaborate soups with groats, noodles, other vegetables and meats and sausages added. Basically any leftover ingredients can be thrown into a pot with boiling potato pieces. My mom sometimes makes sour variant, with brine from pickled cucumbers added for taste.
Pickle potato soup sounds REALLY interesting!! What kind of seasonings are in the pickles?
Would love to know as well!@@hadrianryan4179
@@hadrianryan4179 Dried dill umbrellas and stalks, fresh garlic cloves cut in halves, fresh or dried pieces of horseradish roots. And of course salt. BTW, pickled garlic can be eaten too if you like it.
@@FrikInCasualMode thanks!!
POTATO IS NATIVE ONLY TO PERU , WHERE THERE ARE OVER 3000 VARITIES, THE INCAS ENGINEERS ADAPTED THIS POISINOUS PLANT TO BE EDIBLE. AMAZING THAT THANKS TO THE PERUVIANS , THE EUROPEANS SURVIVED STARVATION!
These folk fought to survive so that I could learn about how they fought to survive. You really hit the nail on the head about romanticising the past. People forget how miserable and tough it must have been.
Yeah now can live in a surveillance state with a Federal Government that continuously spits on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That such an improvement!!!
/s
The past was only pleasant if you were rich and white. Ah, simpler times, with servants to cook and clean and only the best of everything.
Thrilled to see the humble yet versatile potato featured as soup! It looks thoroughly delicious. I really appreciate all the research, insight, and honesty that Ryan shares during these recipes. Looking forward to making this soup and appreciating our modern markets-and those who survived without them. Cheers and stay warm!
I love this series! I grew up poor; in many ways, I live like they did back then (I heat with just wood, live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, can easily survive without electricity, provide most of my own food, always cook from scratch, etx) I love these old food recipes, foods I grew up with with more depth and the history, often with alternative ways to make them. More please!
Same
At least your cabin in the woods in the middle of no where has electricity and internet.
“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Telling it like it is Scrooge!
I so appreciate your take on this - and always enjoy hearing from you! I live remote Alaska…winter is lots of hard work and lots of preparation from the first glimmer of warmth to freeze-up and the long cold, snowy, windy dark.
Happy new year to all Townsends. Thank you for your videos. I especially love the part where you explain the hardships these people went through. To be frank that's what hooked me up to your channel, the way you pair the cooking with the information about the daily lives of the average person in History. Thanks again, keep up the amazing work.
Once again, you guys prove that history can be interesting.
Another fantastic video with our man Ryan.
We were pretty poor for the USA in the 70’s. My mom’s potato soup recipe.
3 lg onions
3 small potatoes
1 clove garlic
1 cup water
2 cups milk
1/4 cup butter
Everything was available from the garden and the goat. Yum!!
Great video and great idea! I know what I’m making tonight. 😂😂😂
Hmm. How would you say goat butter compares to regular cows butter?
@@caderiddle5996 lol. I’m glad you asked. Because it made me search my memory. The butter was from welfare. We got a pound of butter, bag of rice, bag of beans, box of dehydrated milk, a block of (the most amazing government) cheese and a bag of popcorn. Lol.
In the winter there is nothing more comforting and filling than a delicious potato soup. Potato cheese soup is my favorite. I could easily just live on potatoes, cabbage and onions - love that combination. Personally, I like leaving the peels on, that is where nutrients are and they bread down well when cooking.
Please do more Autumn and Winter survival food / tips and more holiday videos too thanks.
So this is basically how my grandma used to make potatoe soup. In addition she used carrots and celeriac for some more flavour. But the dish is prepared in the same spirit. Some things just never get old.
Ryan, that was some great storytelling! You are complementing John well on the channel, keep up the good work.
Happy New Year to all of you!
In XVII, XVIII century in Poland the main peasants food was potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables. Meat was a rare delicacy, mostly reserved for the nobility or rich people. That's why people in villages lived short. Mostly dying at age 40, 50.
Incredible presentation and storytelling at the beginning.
When people refer to "simpler times", I'm reminded of the words that Mr. Townsend Sr. said when asked about if he'd live in the 18th century:
"Only if you want to live 20 years less."
they mean simple as in before processed foods and constant distractions from daily technology. but ditto.
Also never retiring and working menial jobs until the day you die
@@sofiabravo1994 But the arsenic in makeup and radium and watches before we knew better was more wholesome, haha
Hurray, Townsends! You all work so hard, and you are very much appreciated. Happy New Year!
I grew up in a 50's Pennsylvania "Dutch" countryside town and your hearty soup brings back yummy childhood memories. Nothing was ever more satisfying and it's on tomorrow's menu !! 🙏
This host is so good, love his demenor and pace of speaking. He seems completely passionate as well
I grew up eating a version of this, sans any meat. I still enjoy it to this day, it consists of just water, potatoes, celery, onion and salt and pepper, My mother ate this growing up in a family of 13 during the end of the depression, and her mother born in the 1800s made it before her. I am 70 years old and it is still a fast, easy and surprisingly tasty soup. My mother liked rivels (sp?) in her soup, they are just flour, eggs and a pinch of salt mixed together with the fingers until pellets start to form, drop these small pellets of flour and egg into the soup and simmer about 10 minutes or so until the raw flour taste is gone. She told me they had chickens so the eggs were easy to come buy, bought flour in bulk because my grandmother baked 12 loaves of bread, twice a week to feed everyone, and she said this was just a treat for her to have in the soup.
I really enjoy all these cooking videos. To me, the depression, being poor and the long winters of survival in the 18th century, actually before and after, are all similar in need, so a lot of what has been eaten during tough times is pretty much the same things, just prepared a little differently.
You're still sharp at 70 too. Ill have to try it some time!
flour, eggs and salt sound like German "Spätzle" or according to your description "Knöpfle" (little buttons)
@@andreabartels3176 Thank you for the info, as I said my mother called them rivels, she learned from her mother, and her mother from hers, all German ancestry there. In fact my mother's grandfather and grandmother never spoke English, her father, my grandfather never spoke English until he started to school, he passed away in 1969 and was born in 1888. The family came too the US in 1717 and potato soup was at least 4 or maybe 5 generations back for sure, and probably longer than that, they may have indeed called them "Knöpfle" but I have always known "Spätzle" as a German noodle type food, which were not what rivels as I know them are. Rivels are like small dough balls, more like tiny drop dumplings, not noodle shaped. Though they may be the same thing just made differently. Thanks again for the info.
The more historical material I check out the more I realize we live in the best of times in human history.
70-80 years of general peace will do that
In the western world, live in times of abundance and luxury, and we idolize excess and waste. This is apparently the fruits of a couple world wars(thanks again Germany!) and the eternal greed that is the free market.
meanwhile in the rest of the world......
@@Jedishill680 General peace, where? Certainly not for the past 70 to 80 years. Your privileged view of "peace" has very likely largely been the result of Western imperialism around the world for the past few hundred years. Please don't ever forget this, the millions of have lost their lives thanks to the violent greed of the West bombing, invading, destabilising countries around the world and controlling international trade at gunpoint, certainly never will.
The USA alone has killed millions around the world in the past few years alone.
Thank you all for giving us excellent quality and informative videos time after time. May you all have a happy new year and I look forward to many more videos to come!
This is a classic example of why the poorest French people ate better than the poorest of other nations, technique. I understand that you are recreating a recipe, but that is not how to build a soup. So much respect for the channel, and the commitment to history, please don't get me wrong. But if the onions are sweated first, the meat browned, then add the water.
Technique is exactly why the French were considered the best cooks, and very clear why the world followed their recipes. I have no doubt that the soup is wholesome and would let you survive, but flavour is morale in a deep isolated winter.
Not trying to take away from your efforts, because I really loved the video alot. Not french by the way, just an Australian that was raised by English women, and Chef for last 24yrs.
Keep up the good work mate, great work.
In Poland we still have a lot of traditional soups that are very cheap to make also ingredients last very long. Like pickle cucumber soup, sauerkraut soup, żurek (sour soup). Ale are made from things that are fermented, so those can hold a lot longer than fresh veggies. Also sour make soup rich in flavor itself, so you just need to take chicken carcass or some leftover bones to make a broth, put potatoes or carrots in it with main ingredient and boil it until veggies are soft. Of course that's cheapest way to do it.
Looks alot like Scottish stovies😊 not sure the origin of our family recipe for potato soup, but it seems almost everybody in my family makes it this way, 10 lb of potatoes peeled and chopped into big chunks like 2 inch pieces, two onions sliced into rings and broken apart, cover with water + 2 in above vegetables, boil until tender, they don't get mashed they stay in big chunks, no thickeners are added, the broth stays thin, 1 cup of heavy cream, one stick of real butter, salt and pepper to taste. It's always to served with unsweet cornbread. There's no bacon or chives or any of that. I'm assuming then that my ancestors had access to cows, and that's why there's heavy cream and butter, so they were probably farmers, I'm from east Tennessee
Yeah but where is the beef tho?
@@lisamills161 ❤️
It didn’t occur to me till you said it but you’re right. Stovies are made with the meat you have to hand, leftover Sunday roast, mince or nor most commonly, canned corned beef, but they are a meal served regularly in working class Scottish homes here and now. No cream or butter here though, but maybe some chopped carrots.
This is so comforting yet interesting from the set up and outfit to the music and the cuts to other scenes and food. This is my first time watching a video from this channel! I love it
I love these videos. The sheer passion for heading down into the details, being frank about the analysis, and really figuring things out is so satisfying. I'm an engineer, a patriot, a homesteader, and a mild prepper, and all of this is exactly what I want to know about. You guys are doing wonderful work across so many categories of interest (history, DIY, food, prepping, homesteading) we really owe you a lot for making these. Godspeed!
There was a PBS show many years ago called "Frontier House." At the end of the series, the families were all rated on their ability to not only store food, but six months of wood to cook it!
And most of them failed. Those spoiled daughters running around in their undergarments and crying because they could not milk the cow.
This shows how we take our modern conveniences for granted. These days, we eat more out of enjoyment. Long ago, they were eating of survival. Thanks for sharing another great video. Hope you have a Happy New Year. Cheers!
I love how much expertise he has (the whole staff too) that he's anticipating the comments and saying don't bother without having to say it.
My grandmother’s cookbooks from the 30’s-50’s used potatoes like this. Anytime you needed a filler, unsalted a dish, or replace flour. Potato. It was the answer to many things in both preparation and saving a dish.
That exact plate is still very popular in Bolivia.
We eat lots of potatoes, look it up, it's so common to the point we also eat them freeze-dried (it's part of many traditional dishes).
You might not find it so much in restaurants but definitely a common household/army mess hall dish.
Potatoes are native to that region 🥔🇧🇴
I remember helping my grandpa plant potatoes and asking him why we were planting so many (it was just for him and grandma)... and again when we dug them up and seeing the burlap sacks full of them... ready to sit in the basement corner under grandma's shelves of canned food... but they always got used up. Great video and thanks for sharing!
Keep those skins on! Thats where all the nutrition is at!
Love Ryan's food videos. He is so great at explaining what life was like and what folks needed to do to survive. A+
When the finished product was revealed, I realized that this was one of my favorite cheap meals from university.
Cheapest cut of beef you could find in the store.
Sliced potatoes (peel still on, for me)
A chopped onion
Celery if I had it.
Pressure cook, and add salt and pepper.
You weren't kidding that people keep rehashing this dish! It must be the simplest food there is - and good, too.
Potatoes are great! .. I do soup like that quite often, but I also add some carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, beans etc. Work well with chicken, pork, beef. Very easy to store in the fridge and microwave the following days. Happy New Year!
i love potatoes in general. they taste so nice even without anything
I love this channel it’s relaxing to listen to and quite informative. I especially love visiting my local diner for some breakfast and throw this on while I wait
My first potato soup (I was maybe 8yo) was basically boiled potatoes in water with a splash of milk. I loved it! Over the years, I created my own version that has more milk, a little butter, some onion, and a tiny bit of ham. Of course, I play with the herbs and spices. It's not the creamy stuff that comes in cans. It is comforting, filling, and really good! Oh, I forgot, I do add a little nutmeg when I have nutmeg around...
Try heavy whipping cream instead of milk, that's how my mom taught me and it's lovely.
@@change691 Sounds good!
I love potatoes. We eat potatoes pretty much every day in Poland. Mashed, baked, in soup, with sauce, in salads, etc. So cheap, so versatile and so delicious. You can get kilos of them for the equivalent of pennies even after all this inflation.
I've learned so much on this channel. One of the best out there!
Your little monologue at the start was so inspiring! Wonderful video.
People weren't kidding when they said potatoes are a super food
I see it as a God given food. Poor or wealthy, that’s what we need.
Great simple recipes ❤️
In A Christmas Carol, it is said by Dickens that Scrooge got a rather poor dinner at a tavern before he came home to his house and a bowl of medicinal gruel, because he had a cold. That dinner at the tavern was likely beef or mutton and potatoes, based on the evidence you describe. The gruel or soup that he ate was likely plain or with brandy in it, like you have made several times here.
Still make something like this still. It's good stuff in cold weather
We do this is Eastern europe - Romania. Onions, potatoes, bits of sausage (pork or bacon), paprika, bay leaf. If you have pickles next to it youre a king.
Sure we watch your soup videos :) I love soups! This is absolutely going on the to-make list. Thank you for all your work - all of you involved!
Such a great video it’s something so simple but it’s a days of their lives meal that really puts it all into perspective in looks and taste these were people eating to live and that’s what makes these videos so impactful thank you again for all the hard work and knowledge you share with us
An old family recipe from Hungary (they had to flee as refugees in the 50s) is potato goulash. Mostly potatoes, a couple of onions, protein can be a little bit of dried sausage / mushrooms / dried legumes or a combination (for the protein ratio you only get two or three 1/4 inch slices of sausage per bowl). Dried noble sweet paprika goes on the onions and meat when they are done get it stuck to the pot, then add water and potatoes and scrape the stuff off the bottom of the pot.
Thank you mentioning how much hard work it took to just survive in the “simpler” times. Growing up on a small dairy farm (pre-cell phone era) we were working all the time. My family’s farm was amongst Amish farms and I saw how hard they needed to work. Being within walking distance was somewhat comforting, it allowed people to check up each other when we were all snowed in. But the further apart you were, the more you were reminded how truly on your own you were.
Unfortunately when people talk nostalgically about bygone eras (many times ones they didn't even experience themselves) it's usually for the wrong reasons and skews against reality of what life was actually like. Very dangerous
Happy new year from Australia to Townsends. Ever since I decided to start eating less meat, the potato has been a godsend to me. Truely it is the king of vegetables.
One of the few vegetables that are remotely affordable to buy routinely these days, lol. Bless the spud.
This channel and the work you guys do is amazing!
I love the simple food-especially potato soup! Thank you for this.
Love a new Townshend video! We would find the precarious nature of life in the 18th C utterly terrifying. Nothing simple about those times at all. Many thanks!
I firmly agree with the "simpler times" part. There may have been less technology, but by no means was life "simpler"!
Simpler means less complicated, not less difficult. That’s easier. Simple things can be a lot of hard work. It’s simple to dig a trench, for example. It’s not complex. It’s just laborious.
Don’t let him confuse you. He’s trying to talk us out of invading his 18th century paradise with his propaganda 😂
I actually disagree. It was simpler back then with far fewer options and choices. What it was was a lot harder. Simpler but harder.
i appreciate this channel!! its uh. useful as a college student. you can live right next to a dozen grocery stores and all but if you cant afford much of what they offer you're on meager broths, grains, and root vegetables year round
Potato soup sounds so delicious! Simple as well.
Happy New Year Townsends!
That looks great! Without changing any ingredients or equipment, some modern methods I would add to improve the dish are: cut the beef smaller. Before adding water brown the beef in soup pot. Take out the beef once brown. Add the onions and caramelize them in the pot. Once caramelized, add some water and deglaze the bottom. Add the beef, potatoes, seasonings and remaining water.
I think this would just greatly increase the flavors and appearance of the dish.
Cheers!
I acquired a profound respect for our ancestors when I started gardening.
All I can say is that if I had to rely on my garden 100% like they did I would be a goner!
Not necessarily, you would have learned the skills required for survival from your community/family from early childhood.
By the time you reached adulthood, you would have been an extremely competent, skilled person.
@@ViveLeQuebecLibreTabarnak Skills only go so far when dealing with Mother Nature, if you lived to be 40 it was a miracle let alone high birth fatality rate and starvation during winter months due to several years of drought, disease, insects or floods. That's why many families were forced to be nomadic like the Indians were to survive.
@@sherriianiro747 we’re talking about 250-300 years ago, not 1000 years ago. There were very few nomadic societies remaining in the 1700-1800s.
You would have been part of a community somewhere in which people traded their skills and labour for survival.
Also it was not uncommon to live into old age during these time periods. And there weren’t many people living in northern regions with incredibly harsh winters like there are now, though they did exist, just in much smaller numbers.
I think people vastly underestimate how advanced many societies were 200-300 years ago. Maybe that’s Hollywood’s fault.
@@ViveLeQuebecLibreTabarnak Are you kidding? Anyone who has studied American history knows the average lifespan in 1776 was 35,
and people were forced to leave their homesteads due to life - threatening conditions. Life was hard and back - breaking nor were there antibiotics and medicines we take for granted today. Thirty seven epidemics alone 250-300 yrs. ago.
Many were forced to move because of poor farming skills or no one nearby to get food. Many children were malnourished from vitamin deficiencies which made them more susceptible to disease, and roads were not able to be traveled during inclement weather either and many starved.
Look it up.
@@sherriianiro747 average life expectancy did not mean that most people died around that age, because it is skewed by the incredibly high rates of infant mortality. If you survived infancy there was a good chance that you would make it to be at least middle-aged.
And America (and the new world in general) was a tiny sliver of the global population until very recently. Homesteading is not an accurate reflection of the lifestyle of the average human during these eras. Many people in Europe and Asia lived in metropolises that are still around today, some with 7 figure populations, and enjoyed a relatively good life even by today’s standards. These were highly-developed, thousands of years old societies who knew how to survive quite well.
But if you’d like to have that grim, inaccurate view of history, please be my guest.
So proud and thankful for u guyz
I love simple and hearty foods like this
So wonderful you’re sharing this with the world here
It's always a good day when Townsends comes back around!
My great great grandmother would make a soup nearly identical. She would cook the beef in a cast iron pot for a bit first to brown somewhat. And added cabbage if permitted. But a big thing I remember her doing was reserving 1/3rd of the potatoes for the second half of it cooking, so you WOULD get really mushed creamy potatoes AND chunks.
The recipe she had, however, must have been old because things like salt were written as "ſalt" and some other words were really indecipherable.The card it was written on she said was passed down to her from HER great grandmother, and does not know where itmight have been before.
Best channel right now! Thanks for the great content :)
Happy new years townsends, my father has always loved to make this with milk instead of water and it adds a richness to it as well. Hope you're doing well
People should grow potatoes and root vegetables this year just in case. I love this channel so much ❤️
Bit late to be planting now. Luckily, you can just buy them.
i have started collecting my sprouts. plant in feb here.
I live in a mild climate and have a tub I keep planted all year. When we have frosts I cover it with straw, it’s my “root cellar” I can rob potatoes as needed.
@@SpeakShibboleth in the northern hemisphere, at least in zone 5 it's actually a bit early. All depends.
@@squiddwizzard8850 yes, that's how seasons work. They're cyclical like that.
Potato soup is a go-to comfort food for me, something that my Grandma made.
Love these videos . Great atmosphere with the music and editing. Pays homage to a simpler time .
I love this series, fantastic host who's clearly passionate about this subject and a subject that, to us kind of gets overlooked but to the people who lived in these times would have literally been of life and death importance.