MENU DESCRIPTION: “A house specialty full of baked potatoes and topped with cheddar cheese, bacon and green onions.”
The thick-and-creamy texture and rich taste of Tony Roma’s best-selling soup is duplicated with a little flour, some half- and-half, and most notably, instant mashed potatoes. Give yourself an hour to bake the potatoes and around 30 minutes to prepare the soup. Garnish each serving with shredded cheese, crumbled bacon and green onions, and then humbly await your due praise.
SERVES: 6 TO 8
INGREDIENTS:
- 2 medium russet potatoes
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup diced white onion
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 4 cups chicken broth
- 2 cups water
- ¼ cup cornstarch
- 1 ½ cups instant mashed potatoes, dry
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ¾ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon dried basil
- ⅛ teaspoon dried thyme
- 1 cup half-and-half
GARNISH:
- ½ cup shredded Cheddar cheese
- ¼ cup crumbled cooked bacon
- 2 green onions, chopped (green part only)
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees and bake the potatoes for 1 hour or until done. When potatoes have cooked, remove them from the oven to cool.
- As potatoes cool, prepare soup by melting butter in a large saucepan, and saute onion until light brown. Add the flour to the onion and stir to make a roux.
- Add broth, water, cornstarch, mashed potato flakes, and spices to the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Cut potatoes in half lengthwise and scoop out contents with a large spoon. Discard skin. Chop baked potato with a large knife to make chunks that are about ½-inch in size.
- Add chopped baked potato and half-and-half to the saucepan, bring soup back to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer the soup for another 15 minutes or until it is thick.
- Spoon about 1 ½ cups of soup into a bowl and top with about a tablespoon of shredded Cheddar cheese, a half tablespoon of crumbled bacon, and a teaspoon or so of chopped green onion. Repeat for remaining servings.
