The Decision of Dinner
As we checked our food inventory the day before, we noticed that we had some produce that needed to go soon… one of those things being a large bag of potatoes. They were starting to grow. We decided to make one of my new favorite meals, Stamppot, which is something like a bunch of mashed potatoes and some sort of vegetable mashed all together with some cheese and bacon bits and usually there is a rookworst (smoked sausage is what it translates to… but not 100% if that is what it is…?) on the side. We also had some broccoli and carrots and onions in the house so Job decided that we would make Leiden Stamppot, or Hutspot. Job grew up in Leiden so I was really excited to help him make this special dish.
For more information about the history of Hutspot, click Here and Here.
While Job was working, I went out to the market to grab a few things we needed. We needed some young cheese, some bacon cubes and some butter. I went to the local Albert Heijn, which is the supermarket around the corner from our house. I was successful in gathering some cheese and some butter, but the store was all sold out of bacon cubes. I sent Job a quick message that the store was all out and asked if he could pick some up on his way home. He responded with of course and I went back to gathering a few other treats.
Ingredients:
These are the main ingredients of any stamppot dish. What differentiates the stamppots are the different vegetables you mix with the mashed potatoes, cheese and bacon. So far I’ve had Endive Stamppot, Kale Stamppot and now this Leiden Stamppot (carrots and onions)
A lot of potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1 inch blocks (I would say that I used probably 10-15 potatoes)
Bacon cubes
A small bowl full of young cheese (A: Young cheese is generally a gouda cheese aged for about 2 months. You can substitute with Cheddar or jack cheese. It is not a super intense flavor. Pretty mild. B: if you have a large block of cheese, I used 3 fingers width of the block. Job usually uses 2 thumbs worth, but I think 3 of my fingers is about 2 of his thumbs, but you can see the pictures of the amount we used.)
Carrots, chopped
Onions, chopped
1 Packet of Stamppot Jus (I’m sure there is a recipe to make your own stamppot gravy, but we always just buy a packet that you add butter and water to)
4 Tbsp of Butter
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 Tbsp of Milk
Rookworst
Food Prep
Around 6PM, I decided it would be a great idea to start cooking the potatoes for the stamppot because they take forever to cook. I peeled the 10-15 potatoes…
with our left handed peeler (a very tough thing to do when you’re right handed, and I made a mess)
and cut the potatoes into 1 inch blocks… well 1 inch chunks? They definitely weren’t blocks. While I was peeling and cutting, I put a large pot of water on the stove to boil. Once all of the potatoes were peeled and cut up, I put them into the pot of water.
Once the water boils, time the pot for 20 minutes. When 20 minutes is up, the potatoes should be soft and a spoon or fork should be able to glide through. Basically you want to make them soft enough to mash, and then just pour out the water they boiled in.
While my potatoes were cooking, I cut up the cheese and put it aside in a small dish.
Next, I would have cooked up the bacon cubes, however when Job went to stop at the Albert Heijn on his way home to see if we could get some bacon, his bike lock didn’t work and so he couldn’t go inside. This is what they look like uncooked and in a package:
(I also found a picture from when I made the Kale Stamppot of the bacon sitting in a dish lined with paper towel to soak up some extra grease)
Oh well, no bacon for our stamppot this time, but what you normally do is you put a small package of bacon cubes in a pan and cook them up until they are crispy. (I like a bacon a lot and so does Job, so we usually use both sides of the package) You can then use the leftover bacon grease for your stamppot jus instead of butter.
Since the potatoes take so long to cook, this is usually when I prep the other veggies, but since I had never made this variation of stamppot before and didn’t want to mess anything up, I just kept my potatoes drained and covered and waited for Job to come home so that he could show me how to prepare the other things.
If you’re making a stamppot with a leafy vegetable like Kale or Endive, you would just want to make sure the leaves are cut up into small strips or squares and that there are no stems and ribs, and then you just mix it into your mashed potatoes, cheese and bacon.
When Job arrived home, I let him know that I had already cooked the potatoes and asked him what still needed to be done. We had to slice up the carrots and the onions. We used two small onions and about a half of a bag of baby carrots. We also decided to use up our broccoli as a side veggie. 
Job put a medium sized pot on the stove with water and a bouillon cube for some added flavor to our veggies. 
He put the carrots and onions in the boiling water and placed a steamer basket on top and filled it with our broccoli so we could cook all the veggies at once.
While they were cooking, I started to mash the potatoes. I always add a large chunk of butter, probably about a tablespoon or two to the mash and probably about a tablespoon or two of milk as well, to make it extra creamy. Then, I added in our cheese cubes, and would normally add in the bacon cubes as well. 
Because the potatoes are so hot from boiling, they just melt everything in there. I always also add a little salt and pepper for taste. I added a little cayenne pepper for some kick. Next we added in the carrots and onions that we boiled as well as some of the water that we boiled it in because it was so flavorful. It also helps to meld the mash together.
In a pan on the stove, I then melted some butter to make the jus packet, about 2 tablespoons of butter lightly browned, then add in the packet with about a glass of water, and just let it thicken up.
Lastly we just had to cook up our Rookworst in the microwave and we cut it in half and dinner was ready to be served.
As usual, the stamppot was super tasty and filled us both right up, and we have plenty left over for lunch and dinner!
And in case you were wondering how our other stamppots turned out…
Endive Stamppot
Kale Stamppot
The Traveling Spoons 