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Registered: ‎03-09-2010

Review: Panera Bread Loaded Baked Potato Soup

This is a review for the recipe from the original post made by irshgrl312:

http://community.qvc.com/forums/Recipe/topic/233387/panera-bread-loaded-baked-potato-soup.aspx

I followed this recipe with a few variations - I was short on time so I used Del Monte Fresh Cut diced potatoes, I skipped the red pepper and chives (personal preference) and I used Hormel Real Crumbled Bacon (salad aisle).

Now, I forgot to put the green onions in when I first tried it and I initially thought the soup overwhelmingly tasted like cream cheese. I thought that maybe 8oz may have been too much but the consistancy was right. I thought maybe using the canned potatoes instead of fresh may have altered the taste a bit since not as much starch would be released to offset the cream cheese taste.

So, I put the soup in the fridge overnight and decided to add a few things the next day. I took out an oversized chili mug and put a good portion of soup in it. I added some salt, onion powder, Sargento's Double Chedder cheese and the green onions that I forgot about and PERFECT!! The soup was GREAT!

I'm not sure if sitting overnight allowed the flavors to distribute better or if the addition of the ingredients helped tone down the cream cheese a bit. Either way, I'm happy with the tweaks and I will be making this again with fresh potatoes next time. Smiley Happy I'm a big fan of potato soup and was happy to find a very easy recipe for it - so thank you!