With just a handful of ingredients and roughly 30 minutes in the kitchen, this creamy loaded potato soup is the ultimate liquid comfort food and perfect to reheat for lunches or dinners!
So here in the northeast, it's been getting a little chillier now that it's October. Last week there was a 3 day long rain storm and it was basically 50 degrees every day. Major soup weather. This was a sharp shift from the 80 degree weather we had been having the week before...I haven't even taken out my winter bin of clothes yet. When is the time that everyone does that? Is there a certain date? Or do you just go by when it's simply too cold to leave the house without a scarf or hoodie? I took out a scarf and one of my Northface jackets for a particularly windy day when I went to a Mets baseball game with friends, but I refuse to take out all the sweaters and coats...at least for now.
I was craving something warm and cozy, and perhaps a bit cheesy. Okay, I was craving potato & bacon soup. It's one of my all-time favorite soups that I don't get around to making very often, but I wish I did! This soup was smooth and flavorful, and just the thing I needed. My boyfriend had a bowl and likened it to 'liquefied mashed potatoes'. I'm not sure if that was a compliment or an insult, but I love mashed potatoes. I'll take that as a compliment, thank you.
The original recipe I adapted to create this was a 'rustic' version of loaded potato soup, which basically means that the original recipe was a thicker/chunkier version. I'm a big fan of creamy foods, or at least foods without lots of chunks.
For the most part, this soup is chunk-free because I blended the potatoes to smithereens using the Vitamix. If you consider chopped up bacon bits as chunks, then this soup is not chunk-free. I'm all about those kind of bacon-y chunks.
With the proper amount of prep work (I am terrible at that), this soup could go from refrigerator ingredients to a hot bowl of creamy potato and bacon soup in about 30 minutes.
If you're cooking alone (as I usually do), try and have your potatoes peeled before you begin this soup making adventure. Washing, peeling, then chopping the potatoes was the most difficult part of making this soup. Not half bad for a homemade soup, if I don't say so myself.
What's your favorite kind of soup?
Creamy Loaded Potato Soup
With just a handful of ingredients and roughly 30 minutes in the kitchen, this creamy loaded potato soup is the ultimate liquid comfort food and perfect to reheat for lunches or dinners!
Ingredients
- ½ pound bacon, sliced into large pieces
- ½ medium-sized sweet onion, diced
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 1 32 ounce container low-sodium chicken broth, 4 cups
- 3 pounds potatoes, cubed
- 1 ½ cups shredded cheddar cheese
- 2 cups milk
- sea salt to taste, optional
- freshly ground black pepper to taste, optional
Instructions
- Heat a stockpot over medium-high heat. Add bacon and cook until crisp, remove onto a plate lined with paper towels, leaving bacon grease in stockpot.
- Reduce heat to medium, add onions. Cook until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle flour over onions and cook, stirring constantly, about a minute (this will remove the "raw" flour taste and create a roux by mixing with the bacon grease).
- Slowly pour in chicken stock, whisking constantly until smooth. Add in cubed potatoes.
- Bring to a boil, then simmer until potatoes are very soft (15-30 minutes, depending on size of potatoes).
- Once potatoes are tender (can be poked with a fork and are softened), remove from heat and transfer to a large capacity blender. Alternatively, if you have an immersion blender, now is the time to blend the soup until the potatoes and onions are liquefied and the broth/potatoes have become one. If using blender, return liquid potato soup back to the stockpot.
- Stir in cheese until melted and smooth. Add in chopped bacon. Add milk, bring back to a simmer and cook for an additional 10 minutes or until very hot.
- Ladle soup into bowls and top each as desired.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 10 Serving Size: 1 gramsAmount Per Serving: Calories: 389Unsaturated Fat: 0g
This recipe was adapted from The Wicked Noodle's Loaded Potato Soup.
In a soup mood? Try my Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup!
Eileen
I made this for dinner one night and it was so good, that we had it again for lunch the next day.