Grandmother’s Potato Soup Recipe
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My Grandmother’s Potato Soup Recipe makes an old-fashioned, easy, comforting soup recipe. Made with 5 ingredients and no heavy cream! Instant Pot instructions included.
Soup always makes one of my favorite meals. Like our favorite vegetable soup and chicken and dumplings, this is one of the soups that I grew up loving the most. Before there was such a thing as loading a potato soup with bacon, cheese, and onions, my Grandmother Verdie made her potato soup very simply – with potatoes, milk, butter, and salt and pepper. If my sister Wendy and I knew that Grandmother made this soup for supper, we’d beg to be able to eat supper with her. With one bite, it is so easy to understand why!
The Best Potato Soup Recipe
You could add all sorts of things to this soup if you’d like, but I recommend starting with this simple, basic recipe and go from there. Most times, we would rather stick with this version than add a lot of other ingredients, like leeks, onions, and whatnot.
Simple really is best most of the time, isn’t it?
How to Make The Best Potato Soup Recipe
To make Grandmother’s easy potato soup recipe, you’ll only need a few ingredients and to follow a few steps.
Ingredients
Be sure to see the recipe card below for the full listing of ingredients, instructions, notes, and estimated nutritional information.
- Potatoes – I prefer to use russets. You’ll need 2 pounds, about six medium. You can also use Yukon gold potatoes.
- Water – You will need enough fresh, clean water to cover the potatoes.
- Milk – I use whole milk in my potato soup. You can also use your favorite dairy-free milk substitute.
- Butter – the butter adds so much flavor to this soup.
- Salt and Pepper – add salt and pepper to taste for seasoning.
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Prep potatoes. begin by scrubbing your potatoes clean, peeling, and then cutting them into about 2-inch chunks. Place the potatoes into a large soup pot (I use my Dutch oven), cover it with clean water, and stir.
- Cook. Cook over medium heat until the potatoes are fork-tender, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and drain away the water from the potatoes. Add your whole milk and butter to the potatoes and place back on medium heat. Allow the milk to bubble slightly around the edges of the soup pot, about 5 to 10 minutes.
- Season. Remove from the heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Creamy Potato Soup Recipe Without Adding Flour
To customize the consistency and texture of this soup recipe, you can serve it as shown with tender chunks of potatoes or you can make a smooth and creamy soup by using an immersion blender in your soup pot until it reaches the consistency you prefer. No need to add flour or make a slurry with this simple trick! Naturally gluten-free! But really, the chunkiness is simply perfect and I definitely recommend that you give it a try!
If you like a smoother textured soup with all the trimmings (think sour cream, cheddar cheese, bacon, and green onions), you may want to check out my creamy Loaded Potato Soup Recipe as well.
Dairy-Free Potato Soup
To make this soup dairy-free, replace the milk and butter called for in the recipe with dairy-free substitutes. A delicious option for dairy-free milk for this soup is coconut milk. I prefer to use the canned version for the added creamy texture. For the butter, there is plant-based butter readily available. Use your favorites!
Can You Make Potato Soup Ahead?
Allow your soup to cool completely and then store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Reheat and serve.
How to Make Potato Soup Recipe in the Instant Pot
This easy soup recipe is so easy to make in the Instant Pot.
- Rather than cooking in the Dutch oven, add the water, potatoes, butter, salt, and pepper to the Instant Pot. Place the lid onto the Instant Pot and turn the vent to seal it. Cook on the manual setting at high pressure for 10 minutes, then use the quick-release feature.
- Remove the lid to the Instant Pot and set the cook setting to saute. Stir in the milk and cook, stirring often, until thickened, about 3 minutes. Turn off the Instant Pot and serve. If you prefer a smooth and loaded potato soup, use an immersion blender to blend the soup and serve it with your favorite toppings.
Other Favorite Soup Recipes:
Here’s Grandmother’s Potato Soup Recipe. I hope you love it as much as we do!
Potato Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 pounds (about 6 medium) Russet potatoes, scrubbed, peeled, and chopped
- water
- 3 cups whole milk
- 4 tablespoons butter
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Cover potatoes with water in a large soup pot.
- Cook over medium heat until fork tender, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and drain.
- Add milk and butter to the potatoes. Place back on medium heat and allow milk to bubble slightly around the edges of the soup pot, about 5 to 10 minutes.
- Remove from heat and ladle into soup bowls.
- Serve with salt and pepper to taste.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Enjoy!
Robyn xo
From the Add a Pinch recipe archives. Orignally published 2011.
My mother and grandmother Always made this with a little diced onion, lots of butter and whole milk. They served cornbread on the side (not the sweet kind). Thanks for posting this recipe. I am making it tonight!
Katie, don’t you just love that so many of our grandmothers and mothers made foods so similar? xo
Growing up in the 50s-mid-sixties, we had potato soup often in the winters and I loved it. It didn’t seem to be common among friends’ families. But I grew up pretty poor and after high school and when I was going to nursing school, I started having friends who grew up in Middle-upper middle class homes. I was basically told by them that potato soup ALWAYS has cheese; no one would want what I was used to. So, I actually thought that it was another of my mom’s money saving measures. I love cheese, so I started making potato-cheese soup, often with bacon. But though I first liked it, over the years, I grew tired of it and longed for my mom’s version plus I’m on a campaign to prepare simpler foods. We add so many calories and other things when we put three different things into a dish, not to mention time and money. I’m not saying I never make a dish with more than one protein, but not nearly as often. So, anyway, asked my mom for her potato soup recipe and also looked in a bunch of cookbooks and found that potato soup without cheese is a “thing,” not just my mom’s economic measures (she DID have a lot of those, too, but honestly, I can’t remember ever having cheese except as grilled cheese or a lunch of crackers and cheddar. Parmesan? On my spaghetti? I still only use it occasionally though my husband can’t make himself think of eating it without parmesan!
Linda, potato soup with cheese and bacon is good but I just love my grandmother’s simple potato soup recipe. I think of her every time I make it. Sometimes the simple recipes from the past are just the best!
Vola G. Steele August 01, 2020
I have not make this potato soup. I will be trying in a crock pot; When me and brother was little and had a stomached my mother. My mother would made homemade potato soup( she would cooked the potato down low and leave the milk out because of the stomache.) How do you do think this will come out trying the crock pot.
I’m sorry but I haven’t tried making this soup in a crock pot, Vola, so I can’t tell you how it will turn out.
Thank you for your recipe. My Mother wanted some old fashioned potatoe soup that was like her Mother’s soup. Came across recipe and made it for her and she said it tasted like her Mother’s. Good recipe 👍
That’s amazing, Kathy. I guess a lot of the grandmothers made this same potato soup recipe. I’m glad it was like your grandmother remembered.
I made this yesterday on a wet rainy day and added onions and celery to the taters and as it simmered in milk I added a little bit of chopped up ham I had leftover…It was amazing….
This soup is soo good on wet rainy days, isn’t it, Betty? So glad you liked it.
I want to thank you for your grandmother recipe, it’s the BEST!! I tried it today and love it.
Alma, I’m so glad you love Grandmother Verdie’s potato soup recipe. It was such a favorite as I was growing up.
This is the recipe that I have made for almost 50 years now. Love it. Hope yall enjoy it too.
Susan, I love that you have been making this same soup as my grandmother and mother for all these years, too.
Great recipe. My family has always made it this way, back several generations. We add celery salt and some add onions.
It’s interesting to see how many people all across the country have made the same recipes for generations. It makes you wonder where the original was developed. xo
this is very similar to our old family recipe. Differences, we add a couple onions to the raw potatoes and cook everything in the Milk. To mix up the meal sometimes we have side options to add to the top like bacon, cheese, green onions. I remember this soup as a staple in my childhood home! yum!
Jennifer, you might also be interested in my Loaded Baked Potato Soup recipe.
Yes, my Mom and Grandma made this simple soup from the over-supply of potatoes we always had from
Grandpa’s farm. It was the first recipe I learned to make, when I was maybe eight years old. Now my
husband and I make it, some 50+ years after I first learned to make it for baby brother. Simply the Best!
Cathy, I love that you had this soup from your grandmother just like I did from mine. I love those old recipes, don’t you? Thank you.
I grew up on potato soup just like this and have made it like this many times myself. Along the way, I kept trying more complex recipes, but always end up missing this delicious simple recipe. I just made a batch. I am thrilled that you tooke the time to post it!
Thanks, Toni. I grew up with this potato soup, too and sometimes, like you, I just want a simple soup. xo