Day Seven: Spud Soup

Day Seven of Pinterest Shares: Slow Cooker Baked Potato Soup

So lets be real here….when I saw this picture I was all “HELL’S YA!”. There is not much better than a baked tade-y with all the fixins, so it’s gotta be wonderful in a soup, right?

PLUS it’s done in a slow cooker ta boot?! Yup, I’ll take the bait and give it a try.

Ingredients:

5 pounds russet potatoes, washed but NOT peeled. Diced into 1/2 inch(ish) cubes

1 medium/large yellow onion, diced

10 cloves of garlic, minced

64 ounces (8 cups) chicken stock or broth

16 oz cream cheese, softened 

1 tablespoon seasoned salt

optional garnishes: crumbled bacon, shredded cheese, green onions

Directions:

Add potatoes, onion, garlic, seasoning, and chicken stock to slow cooker.

Cook on high for 6 hours or low for 10 hours.

Add the softened cream cheese and puree soup with an immersion blender until the cheese is incorporated and about half the soup is blended. (Alternately you could remove half the soup and the cream cheese to an upright blender, then re-incorporate).

Stir well, top with your choice of garnishes & enjoy!

(Original recipe found here)

On a scale of 1-10, I will give the original recipe a 5 ½. We had it the first night and found it to be a bit bland. Of course, cuz I’m a good ole Ukrainian gal, I had made enough to feed the block, so I put all the leftovers into containers and froze it.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d give it another taste (all soups taste better after they have percolated, no?). I knew I had to do something to give it more life, but I will be honest, I can’t totally remember what I threw into it to kick the flavor up a notch. I wanna say a little more s & p and a can of chicken broth and then whatever jumped out of the inspiration cupboard that night.

It’s a baked potato here folks, so I imagine that you can be pretty liberal with what you jazz it up with. A splash of hot sauce, some sour cream at the end, more bacon…

Would I make it again? Maybe once we have eaten the rest that’s in the deep freeze. And I would definitely wander off the beaten path of the original recipe a bit more.

If you try this one, share your tips with me!

Cheers!