Potato & Bacon Soup

Guy Fieri provided me with a great way to work through a big bag of potatoes and the summer's backlog of bacon-of-the-month:

Recipe

4 large potatoes (or more smaller potatoes)
12 slices bacon
1/2 c flour
6 c milk
5 oz cheddar cheese, grated
3 tbsp chives, chopped
sour cream
salt & pepper

Bake the potatoes at 350 degrees until cooked through and soft, about 45 minutes.  Once those are close to done, slice the bacon into thin strips (lardons - thanks Guy).  Crisp them up in a thick-bottomed pot, then remove but leave the drippings.  Stir in the flour and cook a minute.  Add the milk and whisk together, then cook about 15 minutes, until thick and bubbly.

Scoop out the insides of the potatoes and mash them into the milk mixture.  Add in most of the bacon and cheese, and some salt and pepper to taste.  Remove from heat and serve with more bacon and cheese, plus chives and sour cream.

Notes

This one goes simply enough, not a ton of prep and everything goes in phases.  The one tricky bit was the potatoes.  Obviously, they took longer to bake than the 45 minutes, then were very hot to get out of the skins.  Next time, I'd probably just skin them before baking - not sure why that isn't the default.

In the end, the potatoes fit nicely into the soup.  Except for a few slightly undercooked lumps, we actually had a nice, thick broth with a ton of flavor: