Fully Loaded Baked Potato Soup

I made the best soup last night. I had 3 pounds of potatoes that were thisclose to going bad, so I had to figure out something to do with them. It's not exactly the season for hot, thick creamy soup, but it sounded good, so I decided to make some. I've never made potato soup before, but I've read enough recipes for it over the years that I knew the basic premise. So, I used what I had in my cupboards and refrigerator and I just sort of made the recipe up as I went along. It turned out so delicious, I thought I would share it with you! Since I didn't follow an exact recipe and just sort of made it as I went along, I don't know exact measurements of everything. But, I thought I would just try my best to remember everything.

First, I washed, peeled and cubed the potatoes. Not sure exactly how much. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 pounds. I then fried up 6 pieces of bacon, and when it was cool, crumbled it to use as garnish.

In a soup pot I melted a stick of salted butter, and whisked in about a half a cup of flour, to made a rue. I cooked that for a few minutes to get rid of that raw flour taste and then slowly added in about 6 cups of milk, whisking constantly. I seasoned the milk mixture with salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder. I added in the potatoes, and brought the soup up to a boil then turned it down to low and put a lid on it to simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occassionally. At this point, the potatoes were cooked through and the soup had thickened up nicely.

I added in about 2/3 of a cup of sour cream, and a couple of big handfuls of shredded cheddar cheese, stirred it all together and added a bit more milk, because at this point the soup had thickened a little too much! I served the soup garnished with a bit more shredded cheese, the crumbled bacon, a dollop of sour cream and some chives. It was so good!! This soup made roughly 8 servings and was so hearty and filling that everyone in my family only ate one bowl before they were full. That means leftovers tonight, and I really cannot wait!

I hope you found this helpful and can make sense of my mangled instructions and manage to recreate this recipe at home. It's so good!!