Comfort Food: Loaded Baked Potato Soup
We have been enjoying a gorgeous shift in the weather lately, out of the 90s, and over this past weekend the early morning was in the 50s!
It feels like “Real Fall” which means I feel like baking and making some of my favorite Fall comfort foods.
My Grandma Shirley always made an AWESOME potato cheese soup that I loved as a kid and I was craving it like crazy all weekend long. I decided to try my hand at making my own version and asked my mama-friends if they had recipes to share.
This soup is a combo of two recipes, with my own methods and inspirations mixed in.
I hope you love it as much as we did!
You’ll need:
- 1 package bacon
- 6 Russet potatoes
- 3 carrots
- 3 stalks of celery
- 1 small sweet onion
- 1 container chicken broth or stock (Trader Joe’s)
- About 8 oz heavy whipping cream
- Butter
- Salt
- Pepper
- Flour
For toppings: chopped green onions or chives, parsley, cheddar cheese, sour cream and anything else that screams “loaded baked potato” to you!
Preheat oven, on a foil lined baking sheet cook a pound of bacon at 350 for like 15-20 min, keep an eye on it, transfer cooked bacon to a paper towel covered plate to cool.
In a big sauté pan combine 1 minced onion, 3 stalks celery (chopped) and 3 chopped carrots with 1 T butter and a good pour of the bacon grease.
Cook on medium heat, stir frequently, about 3-5 minutes, then toss into the crock pot. Chop 6 peeled potatoes into small pieces.
In the same pan you cooked the carrot/celery/onion mix, combine 1 T butter, another good pour of the bacon grease and like 1/2 of the Trader Joe’s Chicken stock container, stir as it warms and slowly stir in flour until you have a nice thick roux.
Toss the potatoes into the crock pot, pour the roux on top, pour like 8oz heavy cream on top and the rest of the chicken stock.
I cooked this on low for 3 hours, the switched it to high for the last hour (4 hours total crockpot time)
I used a potato masher to stir it and mash it a tiny bit, leaving PLENTY of chunks of potato!
Serve it with shredded cheese, green onions, crumbled bacon and sour cream, chopped parsley or anything else you’d like!
BOOOooM
