I cooked! - Baked Potato Soup

I tried to make potato soup before, and it was disaster! So when my friend Paula recommended this recipe I was leery.

I have a confession...I didn't bake the potatoes, I microwaved them for about 20 mins.

 The skins just fell off of them. I mushed them up in a bowl and started the soup. I put the flour in the dutch oven:

added the milk and whisked it all together:

when that started to thicken (it took about 15 mins) I added the potatoes, salt, pepper, and low fat sharp cheddar cheese:

once that boiled, I took the pot off the stove and added sour cream and chopped green onions:

stirred that up, put it back on the burner (not sure why the instructions had me remove it in the first place) on low heat, and cooked until it almost simmered:

I ladled it into a bowl, topped with more cracked pepper, cheese, and bacon bits (Oscar Meyer from a bag).

I'm shocked! It's really good! A little thicker than I'd like, but that can be fixed with a little more milk. It was relatively easy to make (took me little over an hour total).  This recipe is a keeper! Good Recommendation Paula!

I Cooked - Potato Cheddar Cheese Soup

I love potato cheddar soup. I recently discovered this at a restaurant (surprise, surprise), so when I stumbled across this recipe I was excited to try it. It was a DISASTER!

Everything was going fine, until I boiled the potatoes. The recipe says to boil them for 15 minutes, and to use baking potatoes because "we want some of the potato to break down into smaller pieces and thicken the soup, baking potatoes are the perfect choice." Yeah, the potato broke down alright! It broke all the way down into mashed potatoes and absorbed every ounce of water in the recipe! Heck, there weren't even any potato lumps like homemade mashed potatoes are suppose to have! And why 4.5 cups of water? no milk, no cream, nothing to give it a smooth creamy texture like potato soup is suppose to have.  The only word to describe this mess is GLOP! To make matters worse, this glop has no flavor! I tried throwing all of the bacon bits in the glop to try and give it some pizazz, and nada! It still tastes like flavorless glop with bacon bits. I think the glop actually made the bacon flavorless!


So right now I have a big bowl of potato glop in my fridge. I am going to try to doctor it up, but I don't know how well that's going to go. I'll keep you posted.