Baked Potato Soup

So we finally found the perfect baked potato soup recipe. Our criteria? A largely dairy free recipe. Most recipes call for cream and lots of butter, but a few weekends ago we tracked down the one we’d been waiting for. We substituted the regular cream cheese for Tofu cream cheese purchased at one of our local fresh market stores. It’s every bit as creamy as the real thing, but with none of the heartache afterwards.

Scrub the potatoes, then dice, add to slow cooker. Then add the diced onions and minced garlic…. top off the finished product with bacon… yum!

Baked Potato Soup

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 (if you use jarred, it’s a 5 teaspoon equivalent)
• 64 ounces (8 cups) **chicken stock or broth
• 16 oz cream cheese, softened (I use low fat)
• 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 garnish

Yields about 10-12 servings.

**Live and learn… here is an issue we ran into…  We have 6qt slow cooker and found we needed to remove about 1 1/2 potatoes and about 1 cup of broth.

~thefoodie