Kicking off soup season strong with this classic Creamy Potato Bacon Soup!

Potato soup combined with bacon pieces, cheese, sour cream, and topped with fresh chives. Yep – it’s basically loaded baked potato in soup form.

So yummy, so cozy, so needed as the weather gets colder! You are welcome.

Any dish that involves potatoes, bacon and cheese is most likely going to be a dish I end up loving.

Raise your hand if you agree with me!

That magical combo has proven to be well loved in so many recipes on the blog: Cheesy Bacon Potato Casserole, Baked Cajun Fries with Cheese Sauce, Loaded Baked Potato Salad…

And oops we totally did it again!

This Cream Potato Bacon Soup is the latest potato/bacon/cheese recipe that you will love, crave and yes even have dreams about.

(Do you dream about food? Because I have embarrassingly elaborate dreams about food…)

The perfect soup you can cup with both hands on a cold day as you snuggle up under a fuzzy blanket. A one-bowl meal that you can eat in front of the television after a long day. The kind of recipe you prepare / freeze ahead of time and still taste like you just made in a few minutes ago.

In other words, exactly what I need as we gear up for a cold, somewhat hectic Fall and winter season.

Top down view of three bowls of loaded baked potato soup

Table of Contents

Gather up the ingredients

For this recipe, you will need a large/medium pot (think soup for around 4 people), a baking sheet to bake the bacon, and these simple, pantry-friendly ingredients:

Potatoes – it is after all, first and foremost, a potato soup
Bacon – Five strips of good quality, delicious bacon. You can, of course, add more if you really want to. Go crazy with the bacon – I can’t blame you for that. Trust me when I say – this is the magic ingredient. So yeah, go crazy…
Butter – preferably salted, and no you shouldn’t skip this! 😉
All purpose flour – this will help thicken the soup and make it rich and creamy. Yum…
Milk – 2% or higher works best for this.
Chicken broth – I find that ‘free range’ chicken broth has the best flavor.
Shredded cheddar cheese – sharp, medium or mild. Whatever you prefer!
Sour cream – rounds out the flavor and makes it tastes like loaded baked potato
Salt and pepper – so important to open up flavors for all the ingredients above!

Let’s Make It

Once you have all the ingredients, it’s time to make this Creamy Potato Bacon Soup happen!

Two bowls of Creamy Potato Bacon Soup with chives in the background

First, cook the bacon. There are two ways to make this:

Oven bake – less clean up, bacon cooks more evenly, and by far my favorite way to make bacon. To do this, bake bacon on a lined baking sheet for 15 minutes, or until it reaches your desired doneness.
Pan fried – it takes less time to pan fry the bacon than it does to bake them, but there’s more clean up, grease will splatter onto your stovetop, and you’ll have to attend to the bacon while it cooks, compared to oven baking the bacon.

Once bacon is cooked, reserve one tablespoon of bacon grease and set aside cooked bacon. Bacon grease is responsible for bringing amazing bacon flavors to the potato soup!

Next, bring butter, reserved bacon grease, and flour to a large pot. Set heat to medium high and stir to combine. Immediately after that, add milk and chicken broth and bring to a boil.

Once soup boils, add potatoes and salt. We will be adding more salt later but we are adding salt here to season the potatoes while they boil.

Using a potato masher or immersion blender, mash potatoes in soup briefly until they are in small chunks.

Mashing potatoes in soup with potato masher — *Using potato masher to mash potatoes into smaller pieces*

Then add cheddar cheese, sour cream and bacon to Loaded Baked Potato Soup. Stir and cook for a few more minutes to combine the flavors. Add salt and pepper to taste to open up the flavors.

Don’t forget to garnish! I like to add more bacon pieces, cheese, and chives to my Creamy Potato Bacon Soup.

Yum yum yum!

Scooping out Potato Bacon Soup with spoon

Tips and Tricks

Cut potatoes in small cubes (~2 inch) so that it doesn’t take long to cook and soften.
Salt added at the end is to open up the flavors, not just to add saltiness. So taste and add salt until you can taste yummy flavors in the soup!

Substitutions and Variations

To make soup even creamier and richer, use whole milk instead of 2% milk, or substitute part of the milk with half and half and heavy cream.
Add herbs such as thyme, parsley to the soup for more flavor.
Recipe calls for russet potatoes but feel free to use yellow potatoes, red potatoes, or any potatoes!
Other cheese to use: Colby jack, mozzarella, any cheese that melts easily works well for this! Avoid hard cheeses.

Bowls of potato soup with bacon and cheese

More Soup Recipes

It’s soup weather and I’ve got more cozy soups for you!

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