Loaded Potato Soup
Cooking with Dave

Ten potatoes, 1 onion, 1 cup red onion, 1 cup celery, 1 cup green onion, 2 tbsp. garlic, 8 ounces bacon, salt and pepper, 2 cups broth, 2-1/2 cups milk, 1 tbsp. corn starch.

Hey, how are you doing? This is “Cooking with Dave” once again. I’m Dave. I am world’s greatest chef that says so right here on my apron. Anyway today, I’m cooking three cheese potato soup. I liked beef soup. It’s good. I put some cheese in it, some potatoes and some onions, how can you go wrong? Alright, but you go here. I’ll show you how to cook it.

Alright, first thing we do is to peel ourselves some potatoes. So, we’ll peel some potatoes real quick like -- and now we’re going to cube them up and cook them, boil them in some water a little while. I will show you how we do it.

Okay. So I peel about 10 potatoes and I’m going to cut these things up in cubes. And I’m going to leave these cubes a little bigger and I think they should be because we’ll have to lose some of while we cook them. It will shrink a little bit so make them just a little bit bigger than bite size.

Now, we’re going to boil some water. Just take some water, put some salt and pepper in it, more pepper, put salt. Remember, we’re going to boil our potatoes until they’re tender. Let it boil and put our potatoes in there. Okay, I’m going to bring back this to a boil and then we’ll going to let them simmer about 10 or 15 minutes, just a little tender. We don’t want to overcook them. This one will be tender but we don’t want to be done. It’s going to be cooked on a water soup which will give them tender. I’m boiling in potatoes, boil them in, potato bowl.

Okay, I’ve been boiling the potatoes about 10 minutes now. They start to get tender and not real done. We don’t want them done throughout just yet. We just want get them on the cooking process.

So, let’s take our potatoes tender now and take one out. You’ve got to be one. Give a little cut. See that tender part. Those things are done, anyway to go -- because now, we’ll take this. We’ll strain up our potatoes off. The same pot, we’ll going to come back with the same pot and we’ll cook with some bacon in it. Just so, we’re going to put some flavor for those potatoes because those potatoes don’t have flavors. They taste just like potatoes, sauté with bacon flavor. I got me just about eight ounces of bacon. I just cut it in half and going to put what it takes maybe just cover with the bottom. Alright, I use it up. So, eight ounces of bacon and cook that up.

Okay, I cooked that bacon all the way to lose crispy. I’m going to going to take it out. We’re going to use that when we serve it, have some bacon bits up on top of our three-cheese potato soup. You all know what I’m saying? Alright, what I really want is the grease is done there. We’re going to leave that done there and we’re going to use that to sauté our vegetables. This is where our flavor comes from. We have the bacon grease going on and we’re going to add ourselves two cups of onion. These are where cup of onions, two cups. I try to heat them in the medium when I do this. It’s soft in the vegetable. I’ve got a cup of celery, we’re going on with the soup. I’ve got a cup of red onions, red sweet onion. I like red sweet onion, good for soups. We’ll sauté red sweet onion for flavor and some green onion, chopped green onion, a cup of chopped green onion right in there. We’ll sauté the vegetables.

Now, we’re going to get that bacon grease all over the vegetables, sauté them up, put some flavors going on, you’ll all going to see, I smell that. That smells wonderful bacon and onion, can't go wrong. Then we’re going to add two tablespoons of garlic, one and two, give them a little stir. Oh men, that’s nice. That’s wonderful. So, that part there is the basis of our soup. That’s where all our flavors get really come from.

Then, we’re going to add pepper and a little bit of salt. And then we’re going to put our potatoes in here and we’re going to add ourselves a little chicken broth. And then nice good stir, everybody stir it up, everybody starting to sweat it down with that bacon flavor going on there. It’s wonderful. Take our potatoes. Let’s throw our potatoes right in there. You sauté potatoes a little bit much. I might cook them some little bit too long. You don’t have to cook them that long just to be alright. Now I’m going to add about two cups of chicken broth. I want to hold one there. I’ve got three cups just in case I need it, just about right, just enough broth, give a nice good stir. Makes everybody round and then we didn’t cover it.

And I’ll come back with some milk. I’m just going to pour enough milk. Don’t put too much to make every thing float, just to cover up our potatoes. So, about two cups of chicken broth and just about a cup of milk with a little bit more. I just want it to be where everybody is floating a little bit. There we go, more like a soup.

Okay, I’ve been simmering the soup now about 10 more minutes. We’ll take a little off, checking it out, looking good, looking like a soup, looking nice, and looking enough for that pot. To put my cheese in, I’ve got to move on now. Alright, there we go, looking nice and smelling wonderful.

I’m going to take these out, two of our guys here. I’ve got three cups of Cheddar cheese. I’m going to put about two cups of Cheddar cheese, shredded right in there and then I’ll put me about two cups of Mozzarella, with some shredded up Mozzarella right in there. Now, the third cheese will be Parmesan that we’ll put on it when we serve it. Here we go, we’ll get our cheese up in there, stir around, get it melted and putting much after cheese that melts the soup, it’s pretty much done. We’re going to thicken it up a little bit. See how much that thicken that cheese did to it, not a whole lot. That’s pretty soupy.

We want our potato soup be a little bit thicker than that so what I’m going to do is take about half cup of milk and a tablespoon corn starch, mix it up in that milk and pour it in here. I have reduced my heat because I was just simmering. I’m going to turn the heat back to medium to let it come back to a simmer. When I get back to a simmer that tells us what thickness is going to be.

When we put a teaspoon of a corn starch, a half cup of milk, put it in there and I’m just going to pour in like that and as we cook that, it’s going to thicken this up a little bit. It simmers a little five or ten minutes or so, it starts thickening up. You can call it soup that’s ready to go. Don’t cook it too much or all your potatoes will cook away. Let it done, they’re still in the bucket, a little bit of taste but they’re still good. I’m telling you right now it is good. I’m just going to dip me up with a spoonful of it. Get some potatoes in there, a little soup action, a little boil of action. It looked good. Okay a little bit more.

Alright, so there we go. There’s our Loaded Potato Soup where it gives us to that bacon kind of flavor up but we’ll use a little bit of bacon up on there on top of the soup. I want to take some Parmesan cheese, put a little of Parmesan cheese right on top of the soup like that, put just a little bacon, alright, put some more bacon, will go on top of the cheese. Add a little more bacon and we’re going to top that off with some chives and we call that Loaded Potato Soup, three cheese potato soup however you want to call it. It’s good. I didn’t taste it yet. We’ll take a little taste.

Oh men, that’s good. Oh, that’s some kind of this. It’s hot. When it cools off, you won’t know what it is. Men that was good. That’s what you call Loaded Potato Soup but it isn’t made done. Alright, you want to cook this up some loaded potato soup. It is one whole, you’re not going to beat it, going to love it, the cheese, potatoes, onions, I love it. I’m going to make an option, alright. Thanks for watching. You all have a great day. Thanks.