Crock Pot Potato Soup

So my work is having a chili cook-off in a couple weeks to celebrate The Big Game (for those of you not from Ohio or Michigan, that is the OSU vs U of M college football match-up). Not that I’m into football, or college sports in general. I think I’m going to try to get away with wearing my Blackhawks shirt when we’re supposed to wear football/college shirts to support our favorite team….

You’re probably wondering, what does a chili cook-off have to do with potato soup? Well, I’ll tell you: I don’t make chili. I rarely ever even eat chili. It’s not that I don’t like it, I just don’t do spicy, and a lot of people tend to make chili with more than a little kick. So I figured I’d try my hand at making potato soup to provide another option. And since my friend (and coworker) has celiac disease, I had to find a soup recipe that didn’t use flour to thicken it up.

That turned out to be a bit harder than I thought. But then I came across Rachel’s recipe over at bakedbyrachel. It makes a nice creamy soup, no flour required! I love that she uses some of the cooked potatoes blended with heavy cream to thicken the stock. Brilliant! So not only do you get the great potato chunks, but there is potato in the cream as well.

Naturally, I had to make a test batch to make sure it would taste ok (it had nothing to do with the fact that I’ve been craving potato soup for weeks) and see whether it would be enough or if I would need to double the recipe to feed all my coworkers.

I will caution you, the smell of onion was quite strong as it was cooking in the crock pot and I was really worried it was going to be way too overpowering in the finished soup. The onion flavor was mellowed a decent amount once the potato-cream mixture was added, but it was still just a little too strong for my liking.

I’m a little worried that since there’s not much in the soup for flavoring other than the garlic, onion, salt and pepper, if I were to cut back on the onion, I might be left with a pretty bland soup. Not being an expert at cooking (and having all but zero experience making soup), I asked around for some advice. I’ve been told that sauteing the onions prior to putting them in the soup will help to mellow the flavor. Or I may just cut back on the onion and add some bacon or sausage into the body of the soup to give it more flavor and make it even heartier – great for curling up inside with this arctic blast that’s soon to be upon us!

So, what about you? Do you have any favorite recipes for those cold, blustery days?

I’d love to hear from you, as always! Have a great weekend!