Absolutely heavenly Loaded Baked Potato Soup. This soup is everything you love about baked potatoes!
Loaded Baked Potato Soup is one of my favorite soups and is perfect on a cool night. The potatoes can be baked ahead of time, making prep time in the evening much shorter. Wouldn’t you enjoy a bowl of this after a long day?
When I was a kid, I hated potatoes. I really, really HATED potatoes. So when my grandmother would offer me her famous potato soup, I quickly declined every time. As I got older, my taste changed and, while I am still not a huge fan of mashed potatoes, I do like lots of potatoes now. One day I was in a restaurant with my hubby for a date/lunch and tried some potato soup. I died and went to heaven.
And I wished I had tried my Grandma’s Potato Soup.
After that, I started trying out recipes and came up with one that we all liked…even my “soup-hater.”
To Make Loaded Baked Potato Soup, You Will Need:
- russet potatoes
- bacon (I now use turkey bacon – How to Make Crispy Turkey Bacon)
- butter
- onion
- garlic
- all-purpose flour
- chicken broth
- milk
- half & half
- grated sharp or extra sharp cheddar cheese
- salt
- pepper
- parsley
- sour cream for topping (optional)
- Dutch oven/Soup Pot
- potato masher or immersion blender
Watch Me Make This Recipe:
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Loaded Baked Potato Soup
Ingredients
- 4-5 lbs russet potatoes
- 8 slices turkey bacon, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
- 4 Tb butter, divided
- 1 large onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 Tb flour
- 2 c chicken broth
- 2 c milk
- 1 c half & half
- 2 c grated sharp or extra sharp cheddar cheese, divided
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 1 ½ teaspoon parsley
- sour cream for topping, optional
Instructions
- To begin, bake your potatoes. Simply wash and dry them, poke several times with a fork, and then rub the skins with a little olive oil.
- Place them on a baking sheet and bake at 375° for about an hour, or until a knife inserted in the center goes in easily.
- Take them out an allow them to cool. (This can be done ahead of time or even the day before. Just store the cooked potatoes in the fridge until you are ready for them.) Your potatoes need to cool enough so that you can handle them.
- In a skillet, cook the turkey bacon pieces with 2 tablespoons of butter, until crispy.
- Scoop the turkey bacon pieces out with a slotted spoon and place them on a plate lined with paper towels. Set aside for now.
- Place the remaining 2 Tb of butter in your Dutch oven. Add the diced onion and minced garlic. Sauté them in the Dutch oven until tender and have a little color.
- Meanwhile, scoop the insides of half your potatoes into a bowl. The other half of the potatoes, you’ll peel so you can cut the "meat" into chunks.
- When the onions are tender, add in the butter and let it melt, then stir in the flour. Cook for just a minute and let the flour get bubbly.
- Pour in the chicken broth, milk, and half & half. Cook this over medium heat until it comes to a gentle boil.
- Reduce the heat a little.
- Add in the scooped potatoes and, with a potato masher, mash the potatoes into the soup as best you can.
- Stir in 1 cup of the shredded cheese and let it melt into the soup.
- Stir in the potato chunks and let it cook until the potatoes are heated through.
- Stir in the salt, pepper, and parsley.
- Serve topped with extra cheese, turkey bacon pieces, and optional sour cream.
- Enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
If nutritional values are provided for this recipe, they are an estimate and will vary depending on the brands of ingredients you use. The values do not include optional ingredients or when ingredients are added to taste or for serving. If nutritional values are very important to you, I suggest using your favorite nutritional calculating tool with the brands you use.
Unit Conversions:
Unit Conversion for measurements (if displayed), going from US to Metric is an auto-generated conversion. If you are using the metric measurements, please double-check to confirm that these are accurate with your favorite preferred conversion tool.
This recipe was originally written in 2020 and updated in 2023 to reflect dietary changes.
Yummie, I was looking for a good potatoe soup. It is cold and snowy here in Buffalo. Perfect dinner!! Thanks Constance, can’t wait to eat this.
The perfect soup for a cold winter day!
Hi, I made this a few days ago. I made no changes and it turned out extremely thick, like room temperature oatmeal. I doubled the chicken broth, and it was still way too thick. Is it supposed to be that way? Nice flavor, though!
Oh my! It *is* normally a very thick soup, but not quite that thick. I wonder if the potatoes were starchier than usual. If you decide to make it again, maybe mash less potatoes and leave more of them in chunks. The mashed ones do add quite a bit of thickness to it.
I don’t know if russets are starchy, but that’s what I used. Just finished it up today…it was very good.
It is soup season here…by the way we got an IPCOT
I\’m so jealous!