Baked Potato Soup

There's lots of baked potato soup recipes out there....and really, they're all about the same. At least, they all have about the same ingredients. So I used this recipe as a "base" and then tweaked things to my liking. Here's the recipe and my variations below:


Baked Potato Soup III

Ingredients
4 baking potatoes
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
6 cups milk
1 cup chopped green onions
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
12 slices cooked bacon, crumbled
5 ounces shredded Cheddar cheese
1 (8 ounce) container sour cream

Directions
1.Bake potatoes 1 hour in a 400 degree F (200 degree C) oven. Scoop out the inside of the potatoes and set aside. Reserve the skins for another recipe or discard.
2.Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium low heat. Stir in the flour to make a roux. Cook about 1 minute, stirring constantly. Gradually pour in the milk while stirring until all the milk has been added. Bring heat to medium and keep stirring until the soup mixture starts to get thick.
3.Add the potatoes, green onions, salt, ground black pepper, bacon and cheese. Stir well and continue to heat for about 15 minutes, allowing the flavors to blend. Stirring well, mix in the sour cream until well blended with the soup. Serve immediately.

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1) I used more than 4 potatoes, but they were small. I scooped out the "guts" of most of them and then cubed up 3 potatoes to add in at the end. This gave the soup a good variety of textures.

2) I first cooked the bacon in the pot, then sauteed a little bit of onions, then did the butter and flour thing. I added 3 cups of Milk and 1 cup of chicken stock. It still was a bit thick, so I ended up adding more milk towards the end.

3) Once the milk mixture had thickened a bit, I added in the potato guts, then took an immersion blender to it (turn off heat first!) and blender it all up. Then I added diced carrots and let those cook for a couple minutes, then I added some frozen corn and the rest of the ingredients EXCEPT the bacon. Since I already had the bacon grease in there, I kept the bacon itself for garnish (I also kept some cheese on the side for garnish as well).

4) Stir,taste and season until it taste good. Serve with bacon, cheese and green onions on top.