Salt pork cracklings and a chunk of parmesan rind often finds our potato soup and it is miserable here also unless you care for about a foot of snow and more falling at about 3 inches an hour.

Linda, Here's a recipe I make for Baked Potato Soup. It turns out quite thick (almost like gravy) so skim milk would work well for this, especially if you add the sour cream. We're having similar weather, and this sounds like a good idea!

Baked Potato Soup

4 large baking potatoes (or 6 medium ones)
2/3 C. butter
2/3 C. all purpose flour
6 C. milk
3/4 t. salt
1/2 t. black pepper
4 scallions, chopped and divided
1 lb. bacon, cooked crisp
1 1/4 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided
1 8-ounce carton sour cream (optional)

Wash potatoes and bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour, or until tender. Let cool.
Cut potatoes in half, scoop out pulp and set aside. Discard skins.
Melt butter in soup kettle over low heat and add flour. Cook for one minute, stirring constantly.
Gradually add milk, stirring constantly until thick and bubbly.
Add potato pulp, salt, black pepper, 2 T. scallions, most of the bacon bits and 1 C. cheese.
Cook until thoroughly heated.
Stir in sour cream if desired and heat through. Serve with remaining scallions, cheese and bacon bits as garnish.

Sounds good....but I don't have 6 cups of milk...not a full pound of bacon and no scallions....and no pork cracklings....but I do have a couple of parmesian rinds...
Some of the milk will have to be chicken broth..
I'll wing it....how bad can it be!! Maybe I'll make some spread out of the ham....

This was in the newspaper today, sounds like you have most of the ingredients if you cut the recipe in half:

Ranch Potato and Bacon Soup
6 strips of bacon, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
5 large potatoes, peeled and diced in 1/2" cubes
4 cups chicken broth
4 cups milk
Salt & pepper
3 tablespoons powdered ranch dressing mix
1 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons flour

Fry bacon until crisp in soup pot over med-high heat. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Saute onion in the bacon fat until softened. Add potatoes and broth. Cover and simmer until potatoes are tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

Mash about half of the potatoes in the pot to help thicken. Add milk, salt, pepper, and dressing mix. Heat throughly. Return bacon to pot and remove from heat.

Whisk together sour cream and flour. Stir sour cream mixture into soup. Heat gently but do not boil.

Do you have any celery? When I make potato soup I dice onions, celery and potatoes. Then I add just enough water to cover and boil them until all the veggies are soft. I keep the lid mostly off to allow the water to evaporate even more. Then I mash it up with a fork leaving some of the veggies whole and some mashed up. At this point add as much milk as you want and salt, pepper and butter to taste. I always serve it hot too never cold.

Lindac: A while back, I gave someone, a go ahead, for mixing Milk and butter to substitute for something.
You gave me your usual lecture on why it shouldn't be done
and made me feel like an A_ _.

Now you are asking the same thing.????????????????
Not that I have any hard feelings about that incident but
I do remember certain things. They sort of put a notch in my brain !!! And I have quite a few notches.
Lou

Yes I have celery....never thought...of course! I'll do that.
Hawk you were recommending milk and butter as a substitute for whipping cream. Sorry you felt like as a$$ but butter and milk do not equal whipping cream. Onions sauteed in butter then mixed and cooked with an equal amount of flour, add skim milk or broth and you get a white sauce. Many cream soups start with a white sauce.
Ghoghunter, do you add any other seasonings besides salt and pepper? are the mushed up potatoes enough to thicken it?
Linda C

Ok Linda : I'll let it go But it wasn't butter and
milk to equal whipping cream.

That's tomorrow....making caramel corn and popping a boat load of corn......

I always wing mine, don't really use a recipe & it is different every time, but always good. I like mine thickened more, so I make a bit of white sauce as you mentioned above, just enough to thicken just a bit. Or I've also used instant potato flakes to thicken with if I happen to have some to get rid of-the sour cream chive variety isn't bad in soup. I really don't think there is a wrong way with potato soup.

I always add a can of evaporated milk to my potato and leek soup.

I never have whole milk on hand so when I make cream soups, I'll use a can of evaporated milk to enrich the low-fat milk. Another idea would be to make browned flour potato soup, which is an old PA Dutch dish.

You brown flour in a frying pan without any fat added, stirring constantly, until it's a caramel color. (Many cooks always keep a jar of browned flour in the kitchen.)

You make your potato soup as usual but use the browned flour in place of white flour. It gives an interesting depth of flavor to the soup.

Browned flour is also used in making white sauces, especially ones with extra sharp cheeses.

I like to add a garlic clove and fresh thyme to potato soup.

Ann

Garlic for sure....not much I make without garlic...but the fresh thyme is under about 8 inches of snow....

Okay that's it! Potato soup it is! It's a cloudy rainy day here in Palm Springs and that doesn't happen often. In fact when I first moved here I used to joke about not knowing when to start making the soups and casseroles with the weather being mostly sunny.
I'm on my way to bake the potatoes, I've never tried it this way before and I bet it adds a nice texture/flavor.
I also have the browned flour in a jar...love that I can make a gravy really brown with it. It doesn't have the same thickening "power", but who cares, just toss in a bit of unbrowned.
Have a nice evening all!

Deborah

I made potato soup last week, and it has no milk and no cream in it. Actually, I did add a bit of cream to this one, simply because I had cream left over from making a lime pie, but normally I leave it out.

I do use celery (and thyme), and I had bought leeks specifically for the soup. I sautéed the celery and leeks in butter with a bit of regular white onion, thyme, and black pepper, and then added chicken broth. I use thin skinned Yukon Gold potatoes and did not peel them. After everything was done (about 30 minutes, or so), I puréed the soup with a stick blender, and you would never know that the potatoes had not been peeled. Also, if you use enough butter, you won't need cream.

If you use Yukon Gold potatoes, the flavor is rich enough not to need milk or cream. I'm particularly sensitive to cream and a little goes a long way for me, but in general I try to avoid it altogether. The main exception is New England Clam Chowder, which always upsets my stomach, but I eat it on occasion anyway.

You have 8" of snow!?!?

Lars

Yeah.....and ice too...
The soup was wonderful....a friend stopped to use my ovens for a couple of batches of snack mix...and I fed him soup and he brought up my tree from the depths of the cellar.
I sauteed about 1 1/2 cups celery and same amount of onion in about 2 T butter until soft...with 1 big clove of garlic. Add ed about 2 T flour, stirred and cooked a moment and added 2 cups chicken broth and 4 medium Idaho russets cubed. Covered and simmered about an hour until the potatoes were soft...added 3 oz cream cheese and 2 cups skim milk, and about 2/3 cup of sour cream. Was looking for some dill seed, thought I had some but guess I was thinking of the church kitchen.
Salt, schezwan pepper, black pepper and a jag of w'shire....and it was wonderful! Down home grandma cookin' food.
Linda C