Baked Potato and Bacon Soup

The weather is just barely beginning to get crispy, and already I’m breaking out my hearty soups. I love soup at any time of the year, but there’s nothing quite like getting cozy on the couch with a warm bowl of soup on a crisp fall day. 

That’s why this week I made baked potato and bacon soup 

I know, I know, that looks gross. Hey, my job is not to make food pretty, it’s to make food yummy. And that food you see up there… well it was YUMMY!! 

This recipe has been adapted from this recipe. I actually halved the recipe, and it was still enough to make 6 servings. 

Ingredients: 

• Half a 10 Lb bag of potatoes – I used Yukon gold potatoes, but I think any kind would do. 
• About 2 Tbs onion powder (I didn’t measure, but it was 2 Tbs max, maybe 1.5) 
• 3 Tbs butter 
• 3 Tbs all-purpose flour 
• Garlic powder to taste – I think I used about 1 Tbs, and that was pleanty 
• 4 cups milk (I used 2% simply because that’s what I have in my house) 
• Half a pack of bacon 
• About 2 cups cheese – I used parmesan because my cheddar and mozzarella were frozen, but next time I make this I plan on doing half parmesan and half cheddar. I don’t do fancy cheeses… I’m sure there are better ones to use. 

Directions: 

Preheat your oven to 425°F. Wash your potatoes, prick each one with a fork a couple times, place them on a baking sheet, and slide them into your oven for 45-60 minutes. When they are baked, remove them and set them to cool. I put my potatoes on a cooling rack to speed up the cooling process a little bit. I don’t know if that works for potatoes, because of their mass, but it certainly didn’t hurt anything. 

While your potatoes are cooling, cook up some bacon! You are allowed to eat one strip now, but the rest is for the soup. Make it nice and crispy so that it crumbles nicely when you crush it. Here’s what my bacon looked like when I took it out of the microwave (did you know that microwave bacon is the healthiest way to cook it… if there is a such thing as healthy bacon): 

And this is how delicious it looked like after I crushed it: 

Back to the potatoes. Once they are cool, cut each one lengthwise and scoop the delicious innards into a large bowl. Throw some potato skin into the bowl too, if that’s how you roll. It’s not how I roll, but it takes all kinds. While I was mangling my potatoes I thought of what a magnificent opportunity this was to make potato skins, but alas, I did not. Next time… 

Break up any bug chunks of potato. The chunks do not break down in the soup, so what you have in that bowl is the size of pieces you will be eating. Here’s what my delicious innards looked like: 

Moving along…. Get out a big pot and put it on your stovetop over medium-high heat (if your stove has numbers on the dial, go with 7). Melt the butter in the pot and mix in the onion powder. Let that cook for a couple of minutes before you add the flour and garlic powder, and then the milk. Cook this base for about 15 minutes, stirring often, until it begins to bubble and thicken. 

Add in your chunky potatoes, bacon, and cheese. Cook and stir until the cheese is melted and everything is well blended. 

Now dish out and eat up your beige slop with glee, because though it may not be pretty, it sure is yummy!