Baked Potato Soup

God Bless You, Skyepuppy, for telling me how to rearrange the pictures without losing my mind!!! It worked! :)

Well I don't know what the weather's like where you live, but in Indiana it has settled into day after day of cold and rain. Consequently, the time has arrived to break out the comfort food. This is one of my favorite comfort dishes. I first had this soup at the home of my friends, Jon and Julie. They used to live just around the corner from me, and sometimes on a Friday or Saturday night, they would invite me over for dinner, coffee, and a movie. One evening, Julie made this and it was so tasty...I just had to have the recipe.

It really doesn't take very long to make, and it works well as a leftover. I can probably get five or six meals out of this recipe - depending on how hungry I happen to be each time I dip into it. :) I also love all the colors in the dish. Regular potato soup is so boring in color - but not this one! (And just so you know, "soup" isn't really the right word for this dish. It is extremely thick.)

Recipe:

2 cups of milk
4 Tablespoons of flour
1 bag of shredded cheese
1 bunch of green onions
Bacon Bits
1 cup of sour cream
3 Tablespoons of butter
4 or 5 baked potatoes

Bake potatoes and set aside. Melt butter in large pan on stove. Stir in flour. Add milk and stir at low/medium heat until thickened. Add 2 chopped green onions, 2 Tablespoons of bacon bits, 1 cup of cheese, and the potatoes. Cook until thick - about 10-15 minutes. Add the sour cream and cook and additional 5-10 minutes. Garnish with bacon bits, remaining cheese, and green onions.


You can use whatever blend of cheese you like. I usually use a blend of white and yellow cheese. If the potatoes are very big, four will be plenty. Since the soup is pretty thick anyway, you don't want to have too much extra potato in there. You can use light or fat free sour cream if you want - it works just fine.

I bake the potatoes in the microwave on a dinner plate to save some time. You can bake them in the oven if you work ahead far enough to have that kind of time. When I bake the potatoes in the oven, I wrap them in foil, pierce them on all sides (to keep them from exploding), and bake them for about an hour at 375. (If a fork doesn't slide out easily at that point, I let them bake longer.) My microwave has a baked potato setting, and when I'm doing four potatoes at once, I run the setting twice. I think they end up staying in there about 15 minutes. Don't forget to pierce them before putting them in the microwave too! AND NO FOIL IN THE MICROWAVE!
While they bake, I cut the green onions. I usually chop up about three bunches - which is more than the recipe calls for, but I like the extra color and flavor.
When the potatoes are done cooking, I slice them open to let them cool a bit while the soup begins to cook. The first few times I made this, I didn't touch the potatoes until I was ready to use them and then they were too hot to work with. This step definitely helps!

I use a fairly big stock pot for this - it makes it easier to stir toward the end when everything is in the pot. Once the butter has melted, I add the flour. The flour absorbs the butter pretty quickly and turns into a paste of sorts.

When I add the milk, I smoosh out the little pieces of flour/butter paste that are left. During this step, the soup stays pretty runny, but beware - as you begin to add other things and it starts to thicken, it thickens quickly. Be ready to stir it frequently so it doesn't burn on the bottom!

I admit I don't really measure the cheese, onions and bacon. I just kind of dump in what I think looks good - which is usually a little bit more of each thing than the recipe calls for. But look how colorful! :)

While that part softens and thickens, I start scooping the potato out of the skin. I've found this to be a much easier method than trying to cut them into squares. I just scoop them out with a teaspoon and...

...put them in the pot with everything else. This is the step where things are thickening so quickly that it burns easily on the bottom, so keep stirring! I admit, I don't always let this step go the full 10-15 minutes. The potatoes are already cooked, so if the cheese appears to be melted, I move on.

...Add the sour cream - and I don't let this step cook the full amount of time either (mostly because I'm starving at this point). I just let it cook long enough to warm up the sour cream.

Ta-da!!!! Soup ready to be served!!

I usually add a little dollop of sour cream on top, along with more cheese, bacon bits, and green onion. It really is a very pretty dish to serve.