Copycat Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Week two of whatever this is. The kids are at the kitchen table with laptops and worksheets and the particular chaos of four children trying to do school in a house that was not designed to be a school. Tyler's math class is on a video call, and the teacher's dog keeps walking across the screen, and Tyler finds this more educational than the math. Justin has his headphones on and is staring at his screen with the intensity of a boy who may or may not be doing classwork and may or may not be watching football highlights, and I have decided not to investigate because I am driving to Omaha with a load of frozen beef and I cannot monitor both a semi-truck and a thirteen-year-old's browser history simultaneously.

Dave is handling the mornings. He gets the kids up, makes sure they are online, feeds them breakfast (cereal, toast, the extent of Dave's breakfast capabilities), and goes to the truck stop by 8. The truck stop is empty. The lot is empty. The drivers are still driving but they are not stopping, not lingering, not sitting at the counter the way they used to. The counter has plexiglass now. The coffee is still a dollar. Nobody is buying the coffee. The coffee sits in the pot and gets old and Dave pours it out at the end of the day, and the pouring-out is a small grief that represents the larger grief — the world is still turning but the people in it are hiding.

I left dinner on Gayle's porch again. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, a slice of chocolate sheet cake in a container. I knocked. I stood in the yard. She came to the door. She said through the screen, 'the pot roast smells good.' I said, 'it is good.' She said, 'go home.' I said, 'I love you.' She said, 'I know. Go home.' I went home. I called her from the driveway and we talked for forty-five minutes about nothing — the weather, the news, the kids. The nothing was everything. The phone call was the visit. The visit happened through glass and air and the six feet between the porch and the yard, and the distance was six feet and also infinite.

The pot roast was Gayle’s — that one I made for her porch, the one she smelled through the screen door and told me to go home. What I made for us that same week, the week the truck stop counter sat empty and Tyler learned more from a dog on a video call than from any math lesson, was this soup. Loaded baked potato soup is everything a hard week calls for: thick, warm, unapologetically filling, the kind of thing you set in the middle of the table and let people come back to as many times as they need. It doesn’t ask anything of you, and right then, that was exactly right.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 8

Ingredients

4 large russet potatoes, peeled and diced into 3/4-inch cubes
6 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups whole milk
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Salt to taste
3 green onions, sliced, for garnish

Instructions

Cook the bacon. In a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat, cook the chopped bacon until crisp, about 6–8 minutes. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate, leaving about 2 tablespoons of drippings in the pot.
Sauté the aromatics. Add the butter to the drippings over medium heat. Once melted, add the diced onion and cook until softened, about 4–5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more, stirring constantly.
Build the base. Sprinkle the flour over the onion mixture and stir to coat. Cook for 1–2 minutes to remove the raw flour taste. Slowly pour in the chicken broth, whisking as you go to prevent lumps.
Add the potatoes. Add the diced potatoes, smoked paprika, black pepper, and a generous pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer until potatoes are completely tender, about 18–20 minutes.
Mash and cream. Use a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon to mash roughly half the potatoes directly in the pot — leave some chunks for texture. Stir in the milk and sour cream over low heat until fully combined and smooth. Do not boil after adding the sour cream.
Melt in the cheese. Add 1 cup of the shredded cheddar and stir until fully melted and incorporated. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and top with remaining cheddar, crumbled bacon, and sliced green onions. Serve immediately with crusty bread or oyster crackers.

Nutrition (per serving)

Copycat Loaded Baked Potato Soup — The Pot Roast Was for Gayle, But This One’s for the Rest of Us