A little prep work is all you need to make this Slow Cooker Potato Cheddar Soup recipe. After you do some peeling and chopping, the slow cooker does the rest.
For more ideas, check out all of our soup recipes.
I love potato cheddar soup. I used to order it every time I went out to eat at a particular restaurant when I was in college. The chokehold it had on me was no joke.
Then, the restaurant closed. And there went my favorite soup. But then I realized how easy it is to make Slow Cooker Potato Cheddar Soup with simple ingredients that I always have at home.
There is a bit of prep work with this soup because you need to peel and chop the potatoes and chop the onions and garlic, but then the soup basically makes itself until the very end when you need to do a little bit of stirring. Don’t let that deter you, though. The prep time is basically 10 minutes.
Honestly, I could eat soup every day. It’s the perfect meal for cold days, but to me, it’s a great every day. Plus, it’s so unbelievably easy to make soup in the slow cooker. For new recipes to add to your soup repertoire, check out The Best Slow Cooker Soup Recipes.
It’s filled with recipes for chicken soup, split pea soup with ham, and more — all made in the slow cooker.
We have a list of Budget-Friendly Slow Cooker Recipes you might want to check out too.
Slow Cooker Potato Cheddar Soup Recipe
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Slow Cooker Potato Cheddar Soup Ingredients:
- 6 Russet potatoes
- 1 medium onion
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 32 oz. chicken broth
- 1/2 stick unsalted butter
- 2.5 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 pint (1 cup) heavy cream
- 1 cup sharp cheddar cheese
- 2 green onions
- Sour cream (optional)
How To Make Slow Cooker Potato Cheddar Soup:
Peel and chop the potatoes.
Add the chunks of potato to the slow cooker.
Chop the onion.
Add it to the slow cooker.
Chop five cloves of garlic.
Add them to the slow cooker.
Pour in the chicken broth.
Quick note: This is the only non-vegetarian ingredient in this recipe. If you wanted to, you could swap the chicken broth for vegetable broth to make this vegetarian. However, I would suggest a little more seasoning because vegetable broth is a little bland.
Add the salt and pepper to the slow cooker.
Slice the butter and place it on top of the other ingredients.
Cook on low for seven hours, then change the slow cooker to high and cook it for another hour.
After eight hours, remove the top and use a potato masher to mash the potatoes and stir the ingredients together.
If you have an immersion blender, you can use that here, but a potato masher works fine.
Shred the cheese.
Add it to the slow cooker.
Pour in the heavy cream.
Quick note: Heavy cream adds a rich flavor to this soup and also acts as a thickener.
If you don’t have heavy cream and don’t feel like running to the grocery store to get some, you can use half and half instead. Whole milk will work in a pinch. We don’t suggest low fat or skim milk because those don’t act as a thickener and just add more liquid to the soup without adding flavor.
Stir until the cheese melts and the soup has a creamy texture.
Add in almost all the green onions (reserve some for a garnish) and stir again.
Serve with the remaining green onions, a dollop of sour cream, and (if you like) some bacon crumbles to give it a little texture.
Slow Cooker Potato Cheddar Soup: Frequently Asked Questions
Peeling potatoes isn’t anyone’s favorite kitchen chore. But you have to do it for this soup.
When they’re done cooking, the tender potatoes, onions, and garlic basically liquefy. So this becomes a nice creamy potato soup. Potato skin doesn’t melt like that, so if you don’t peel the potatoes, you end up chewing the skin. That’s really unpleasant, so you do want to peel the potatoes.
I say this almost every time shredded cheese is in a recipe: Buy a block of cheese and shred it yourself.
Bagged shredded cheese has preservatives added to it that prevents the cheese from melting in the bag and clumping together. But, when you actually try to melt the cheese, the cheese won’t melt well. A block of cheese doesn’t have this preservative, so it melts so much better.
So any time you have a recipe where you want the cheese to melt, shred it yourself.
If you used milk instead of heavy cream to make this, your soup is going to be a little thin. The heavy cream acts as a thickener.
If your soup is thin, you can make a slurry with 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 cup of your soup.
Before you stir in the cheese, remove one cup of the soup. Add 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour and stir until the flour is completely incorporated. Pour that mixture back into the soup and stir in it. There’s some magic in that slurry that will thicken the soup.
You can use cornstarch instead of flour to make a cornstarch slurry, but a lot of people complain that cornstarch changes the flavor of recipes. Personally, I never taste a different, but I do always use flour when I’m making a roux or a slurry.
Wait until the hot soup has cooled to room temperature, then store any leftover potato soup in an airtight container in the fridge. It will last three to four days that way.
This cheesy potato soup may lose some of its volume overnight, though, because the potatoes will absorb some of the liquid while it sits. So, you’ll want to add some extra chicken broth before you heat it up (either on the stove top over medium heat or in the microwave on high, whatever’s easier).
If you’re not going to eat it within a few days, you can freeze the soup. Soup will last up to three months in the freezer, but a creamy soup is best within two months of freezing it.
More Potato Recipes:
If you bought too many potatoes and now you’re trying to figure out what else to make with them, our list of Budget-Friendly Potato Recipes will give you some ideas.
Slow Cooker Potato Cheddar Soup
Slow cooker soups are easy to make at home and taste so much better than canned soups. Get a recipe for Slow Cooker Potato Cheddar Soup here.
Ingredients
- 6 potatoes
- 1 medium onion
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 32 oz. chicken broth
- 1/2 stick butter
- 2.5 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 pint (1 cup) heavy cream
- 1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
- 2 green onions
- Sour cream (optional)
Instructions
- Peel and chop the potatoes. Chop one onion. Chop five cloves of garlic. Put the potatoes, onion, and garlic in the slow cooker.
- Pour in the chicken broth.
- Add the salt and pepper. Slice the butter and drop it on top. Cook on low for seven hours and one hour on high.
- Use a potato masher to mash the potatoes and stir the ingredients together.
- Stir in the heavy cream, cheese, and almost all the green onions (reserve some for a garnish).
- Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a pinch of green onions.
Notes
Nutrition Information
Yield
6Serving Size
1Amount Per Serving Calories 342Total Fat 16gSaturated Fat 9gTrans Fat 1gUnsaturated Fat 5gCholesterol 46mgSodium 1705mgCarbohydrates 42gFiber 5gSugar 4gProtein 10g
Have you made this Slow Cooker Potato Soup recipe? Let us know how it went in the comments.
donna
Tuesday 29th of October 2013
What is half and half
drugstore diva lisa
Tuesday 29th of October 2013
Half & half is a half milk/half cream liquid that you can buy in the grocery store. You can pick it up by the milk. In the UK, it's called "half cream."