How to Thicken Potato Soup: 8 Methods for Making Thick Soup

Potato soup is a usually creamy soup containing diced potatoes, other veggies, and seasonings, such as black pepper, salt, or poultry seasoning. A potato soup recipe might be more of a purée, or it might be chunky, with distinct potato chunks and pieces of vegetables. Variations of this comfort food include a loaded baked potato soup with cheddar cheese, green onions, and crispy cooked bacon crumbles. German call potato soup “Kartoffelsuppe,” one of the country’s most popular soups. Tanzanians call the dish “supu viazi” and make it with coconut milk.

Depending on your desired consistency for the soup, some thickening options will be more effective than others. Use one or more of these methods, which will work to thicken almost any soup for any consistency and will add a negligible amount of prep time to your recipe’s total time.

• Add cheese. For a baked potato soup flavor, add grated cheddar cheese near the end of the cooking process, which will thicken the thin soup as the cheese melts. Whisk the soup continuously to avoid the soup from looking separated or like it will curdle and turn off the heat once the cheese melts.
• Begin with a roux. You can start a potato soup recipe with a roux to increase the soup’s chances for thickness. A roux consists of equal parts all-purpose flour and butter, plus aromatics such as garlic, onions, or celery, which you sauté for a few minutes to eliminate the raw flour taste. Making a roux before you add the soup’s liquid can help to thicken the soup once it comes to a boil.
• Finish with a slurry. A slurry can thicken a soup toward the end of the cooking process. Combine cornstarch and a little bit of water—or the chicken stock from the soup—in a small bowl. With the soup simmering over medium-low heat, whisk in the slurry. The soup should start to thicken almost immediately.
• Incorporate potatoes. Try adding instant potato flakes, mashed potatoes, or additional diced potatoes to a potato soup to thicken it at any point in the cooking process. Carbohydrates like potato starch are natural thickening agents, so try to use a particularly starchy potato, like a russet potato or a Yukon Gold potato, and make sure to use raw potatoes rather than already cooked potatoes.
• Mix in bread. Adding stale bread or breadcrumbs to thicken soup is a common method that cooks use for Italian soups, but it can also work well for many other soups. The bread absorbs some of the liquid, then breaks down within the hot soup, thickening it.
• Stir in heavier dairy. Most creamy potato soup recipes call for a dairy product of some kind. If you plan to make a thicker version, try using thicker dairy from the outset. For example, if a recipe calls for whole milk, try adding heavy cream instead toward the end of the cooking process (set the burner no higher than medium heat). This results in an extra-creamy, luxuriously textured potato soup.
• Use a beurre manié. Similar to a roux, a beurre manié consists of a few tablespoons of flour and butter; however, you add a beurre manié at the end of the cooking process instead of at the start. After forming a smooth paste, add it to the soup and whisk constantly to prevent clumping. The soup will thicken as it returns to a simmer.
• Utilize an immersion blender. If you have an immersion blender, you can try pureéing some of the potato soup right in the pot. One advantage to this is that it requires no additional ingredients. Alternatively, you can transfer some of the soup to a food processor or high-powered blender to pureé it and then return the mixture to the pot of soup.

Here are cooking tips to help you prepare a creamy potato soup that’s naturally thick with a smooth texture:

1. 1. Avoid sour cream or cream cheese. It might be tempting to add sour cream or softened cream cheese to help thicken the soup, but these dairy products only work in certain circumstances. You must blend cream cheese or sour cream, either with an immersion blender or a full-size blender, for it to thicken a soup.
2. 2. Cook the soup on the stovetop. Preparing potato soup in a stockpot on the stove allows you to adjust the cooking temperature so the soup simmers or boils and cooks off excess liquid. By comparison, excess liquid can’t escape a slow cooker, which might result in a thinner consistency, more similar to that of vegetable soup. For this reason, recipes that call for using a slow cooker tend to rely on thickening agents.
3. 3. Use instant potatoes. Unless you want a potato soup with chunks of potato, you can use instant potatoes instead of diced potatoes. Instant potatoes will absorb the chicken broth or other liquid as the soup cooks, resulting in a thick and creamy potato soup.

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