This creamy loaded potato soup is like a warm hug on a cold winter evening! Filling, thick, and delicious; it can be topped with anything you would put on a baked potato! Your family will love it!
Cold Nights, Loaded Potato Soup
I've never been a big fan of winter. It looks nice when we get a little snow, but I love being able to go out and enjoy time with my family without having to bundle up. However, my favorite thing about winter time is soup!
We make a lot of soup at the house in the winter! A good soup feels like a warm hug, so it's perfect for a winter night. As an added bonus, most soups either come together quickly, or can be put on the stove in the morning and let simmer all day to develop some deep flavor! In the case of this loaded potato soup, you can quickly put this together any night of the week and have it on your table in about 40 minutes!
How do we make it?
We're going to combine cheese, sour cream, butter and potatoes to bring the base of this soup together! While the base is cooking, we can make any toppings to go along with it! Looks like this is going to be easy!
We'll start by thinly slicing a bunch of green onions. Make sure to separate the whites from the greens as we're going to use them in two different sections. Now, let's throw a large stock pot or dutch oven on the stove and heat it over medium high heat. Once preheated, we'll drop a stick of unsalted butter into the pot and let it melt.
Add in the while parts of the green onion and cook until transparent. Then we're going to crush some garlic and cook it for just 30 seconds or so. It's important here that we don't overcook the garlic and leave a bitter taste that will go through the rest of the soup!
Next we're going to add our cubed potatoes and coat them in that butter, onion, garlic mixture. Now it's time to cover the potatoes with a quart of half and half creamer, then finish with milk as necessary until the potatoes are completely covered. Cook until the potatoes are soft.
Let's talk blending
We have to blend the soup. The soft potatoes actually make the thickness of this soup. However, we don't want to blend up ALL of the potatoes! Let's leave some a little chunky so everyone knows what kind of soup we have!
Now, blenders. We can do this in a food processor. We can do this in a traditional blender on low and slow. My favorite way to blend this up, though, is the immersion blender. We've used one of these before on our tomato soup. The immersion blender I use is here and you can click that picture to buy it and help a blue collar blogger out!
Toppings!
The best part of this soup is the toppings. You can add any kind of topping you want. I typically go traditional here and add bacon, sour cream, cheddar cheese (which is also mixed in the soup), and scallions. I also like to take the skins of the potatoes and crisp them up in a pan with some olive oil. Almost like adding some potato chips to the top of the soup! As an alternative, you could add some steamed broccoli with the cheddar, or even a little ground beef chili!
Wrapping it up
Once we have the majority of the soup blended, we're going to fold in some cheddar and sour cream. And that's it! Serve this hot, top it with your favorite toppings, and enjoy! This is one of my wife's favorite meals. My kids love it too! I hope you enjoy this as much as we do!
Loaded Potato Soup
Equipment
- Immersion blender; food processor, or blender
Ingredients
Soup
- 3 lbs Russet potatoes peeled and cubed
- 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese divided in 2 cups
- ½ cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup sour cream plus more for topping
- 2 bunches green onions whites divided from greens
- 2 cloves garlic - crushed
- 1 quart half and half
- 2 cups milk
- Salt and pepper
Toppings – optional
- 12 oz bacon
- Scallions from green onion tops finely sliced
- Reserved potato skins from Russet potatoes
- ½ cup olive oil
Instructions
Soup
- In a large stock pot or dutch oven, melt butter over medium high heat
- Add in green onion whites and cook until translucent
- Crush in garlic and cook until fragrant. No longer than 30 seconds
- Add in cubed potatoes and coat in butter mixture
- Add quart of half and half and enough milk to cover potatoes. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer
- Simmer potatoes until fork tender. Blend until only some potato chunks are left. Salt and pepper to taste
- Fold in 1 cup of cheddar cheese and 1 cup of sour cream until cheese is melted. Serve immediately
Optional
For bacon
- preheat oven to 425°
- lay bacon on sheet pan with wire rack OR sheet pan covered in foil crumpled to raise off of pan
- bake in oven for about 20 minutes or until crispy
For potato skins
- Heat olive oil in skillet over medium high heat
- Lay potato skins in oil once heated. Cook until crisp
- Lay cooked skins on a paper towel lined plate to absorb extra oil
- Salt the skins after removed from oil
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