Just made a pot of loaded baked potato soup for dinner last night.
12 oz bacon
6 medium-large potatoes, preferably russet
2 onions
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
4 cloves of garlic
3 cups of chicken broth or stock
1/2 cup of sharp cheddar cheese, grated
2 oz of cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup cream
2 tablespoons sour cream
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
Butter
In a 5 quart pot, start with the mirepoix: carrots, onions and celery finely chopped. Add a knob of butter and saute until tender.
Peel potatoes. Cube into 1/2 inch cubes. In another pot, bring some salted water to a boil and boil HALF of them until fork tender. Drain off the water and beat them as if for whipped potatoes. A hand mixer or an immersion blender will work well.
Finely chop the bacon. In a third pan, saute it until cooked, but not hard.
Finely chop four cloves of garlic. Add the other half of the potatoes and the garlic to the mirepoix, along with the chicken stock and bacon. Do not discard the bacon grease... Add a couple good spoons full into the soup. You may save the rest for other uses, and you should. Bring it to a boil, then reduce and simmer until the potatoes are fork tender.
Add in the cream, sour cream, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and mashed potatoes. Mix until combined, let simmer for while until the cheeses are melted.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
If you like, you can garnish it with chives, a dollop of sour cream, a little more shredded cheese, and a nice sprinkling of fresh cracked pepper when you serve it, but that's just gilding the lily.
The recipe is fairly flexible. You can make it meatless if you want, although you can't make it vegan - the cream and cheeses are pretty important to get it to turn out right. You can replace the bacon with ham, either in whole or in part. You can add more meat if you want it meatier, or more cheese if you want it cheesier. A fresh jalapeno diced up into it when you make the mirepoix will add just a little bit of warmth. If you don't have chicken stock, you can use any type of stock you do have, or just plain water. I've even used water and a chicken ramen seasoning packet before.
It keeps pretty good for a couple days in the fridge. It doesn't freeze great, though, sadly. The texture gets grainy. Not inedible, but it's not like a lot of soups that aren't hurt for freezing.
1 Onion, Carrots, Celery holy trinity - 2
