Spanish Potato Soup with Carnitas and Cheese
This creamy, warm and spicy soup is comfort food at its best. Creamy Yukon Gold potatoes cooked in a broth flavored with onion, red pepper, garlic, cumin, oregano, and paprika with sour cream, cheese, and pork carnitas.
As is the case with most soups, you have plenty of options with this recipe. To make a lighter version of the soup, leave out the sour cream and cheese – or reduce their amounts. You can also make this soup vegetarian by using vegetable broth and leaving out the pork carnitas. The potatoes cooked in the broth are perfectly delicious all on their own.
If you’re making this as a part of Winter Meal Plan #5, you should have some Pork Carnitas in your refrigerator that you reserved just for this soup. If not, no worries. You can leave the meat out altogether, or purchase some pre-cooked pork roast at your local market and add that in place of the Carnitas. Or, fry up some bacon or sausage and use that.
Of course, the best solution is simply to make a batch of Carnitas (Instant Pot or Slow Cooker) the day before you plan to cook this soup. Use them in tacos the day you make them and then save the leftovers for this soup. Crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, Slow Cooker Pork Carnitas Tacos are so delicious and incredibly simple to make. This recipe makes enough for plenty of leftovers that you can use throughout the week or freeze.
Used in this recipe:
Any heavy bottomed sauce pan will work fine for cooking this Spanish Potato Chowder, but if you don’t have a dutch oven, I encourage you to invest in one. They are extremely useful and will last for years. Mine generally gets used at least once a week, often much more than that.
Weekly Meal Plans that include Spanish Potato Soup:
More Popular Soup Recipes:
- Red Lentil Soup with Ham and Aleppo Pepper Oil
- Chicken Tortilla Soup
- Creamy Chicken Chili with Chorizo and Roasted Corn
- Potato Corn Chowder
- Spanish Style Sausage and Lentil Soup
- Zuppa Toscana
- Vegetarian Chili
Spanish Potato Soup
- Prep Time: 40 minutes
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 6 servings
Description
This creamy, warm and spicy soup is comfort food at its best. Creamy Yukon Gold potatoes cooked in a broth flavored with onion, red pepper, garlic, cumin, oregano, and paprika with sour cream, cheese, and pork carnitas.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 large yellow onion, peeled and diced
- 1 red pepper, seeds removed, and diced
- 1 tbsp diced garlic
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp paprika
- A dash of cayenne (optional)
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 2 tbsp unbleached, all-purpose flour
- 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
- 3 lbs Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 to 1 & 1/2 inch chunks
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 1/2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
- 2–3 cups Pork Carnitas (Substitute pre-cooked pork roast from your local market, or fry up some bacon or sausage to use in place of the Carnitas if you like.)
- 1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
Instructions
- Add the oil and butter to a large heavy bottomed sauce pan or dutch oven and set over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the diced onion and red pepper. Cook until softened, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes.
- While the onion and pepper is cooking, add the garlic, cumin, oregano, paprika, cayenne (if using), salt and pepper to a small bowl and stir to combine. Add to the softened peppers and onions and cook, stirring constantly for 1 minute.
- Sprinkle in the flour and cook for about 1 minute more, stirring constantly.
- Stir in the broth slowly to prevent lumps from forming. Turn up the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Add the potatoes, turn down the heat to medium-low and allow the potatoes to simmer until they are fork tender, about 10 minutes.
- Ladle about 1 cup of liquid from the soup pot into a bowl. Stir in the sour cream until completely incorporated. Stir back into the soup pot.
- Remove the pot from the heat, add the cheese and stir until melted and completely incorporated into the soup. Stir in the Carnitas. Allow to sit for 5 minutes to heat the meat through. Sprinkle with the chopped cilantro and serve.
This is one of the best soups I have ever made or eaten ever! I loved it so much, I can’t wait to have it for lunch again! I added a sprinkle of tortilla strips as a garnish. The flavor here is unbelievable, I love everything about it, I had leftover pork carnitas from tacos. Can’t wait to make this again! So delicious!
★★★★★
Thank you SO much for taking the time to let me know how much you enjoyed this soup, Crissy! Your comment means more to me than I can express. This is one of my favorite soups as well – and, I think it’s even better after it sits in the refrigerator for a day or two. Since you liked the flavors in this one, I’m certain you’d like this Chicken Tortilla Soup as well. Have a wonderful day and thank you again for your kind words!
I love that this soup contains carnitas…what part of Spain does this come from?
Wonderful soup….I added some chili poblano and a small amount of tomatillos to give it that authentic Spanish kick!
Thanks for sharing. Definitely one of my new faves and go to soups!
Hi Carly! I am so happy to hear that you like this recipe! The recipe is more “Spanish-inspired” than authentic to any particular part of Spain. I just wanted a soup that incorporated Spanish flavors. 🙂 I love that you added poblano peppers and tomatillos! Those are two of my all-time favorite ingredients and I’m sure they were fantastic in this soup. I’m going to have to do the same thing the next time I make this! Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a comment for me! I truly appreciate it! xo
should the carnitas/ bacon or sausage be cooked first before adding to soup?
Hi Paul! Yes – add pre-cooked meat to the soup. You can make these Carnitas in the slow cooker the day before making the soup, then just shred some of the meat and add it to the soup at the end. Or, sauté some ground sausage in a skillet and add that. Please let me know if you have any more questions. I can’t wait to hear what you think of this soup after you make it! xo
This is a wonderful recipe. We love this soup. Even our Friends love it. We live in Thailand and like strong flavour. A perfect taste. Thank you for the recipe.
★★★★★
Hi Manu! I am so glad you and your friends like this soup! Thank you so much for taking the time to let me know! I really appreciate it. xoxo
Great recipe Rebecca, thank you! Had most of the ingredients on hand today so made it with some variation: used russet potatoes because I had some on hand; vegetarian so skipped carnitas and did use vegetable stock. And didn’t have any fresh cilantro or sour cream so had to skip those two, too. Did include a pinch of cayenne and it gave a nice flavor.
It came out amazing! The russet potatoes are probably starchy so gave it a bit of thickness. I cut them a little bit bigger anticipating they may fall apart and they worked out fine and taste super. Will use Yukon gold’s the next time and plan a bit better.
In general, I used all good ingredients and it tastes amazing.
Topped the bowls with good, shredded sharp cheddar and the reviews at home are great! :-). Will be trying your agro dolce recipe shortly.
Thank you!
★★★★★
Hi Lucy! I am so happy to hear that you liked this recipe! Good call cutting the russet potatoes into larger chunks. They have a tendency to get a bit watered down and fall apart when they’re in small chunks. And a bit of cayenne is always a good idea in my book. 🙂 Thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to leave a comment for me! I appreciate it so much and can’t wait to hear what you think of the agrodolce! xo
P.S. Since you’re vegetarian, I wanted to suggest this Vegetarian Chili. I’m not vegetarian, but would take a bowl of this over one with meat any day of the week. 🙂
Awesome soup at any type of day. My family loves it!
★★★★★
I am so happy to hear that you and your family like this recipe, LoriAnne! Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment for me. I truly appreciate it! xo
This soup is absolutely amazing!! My parents will spend all day crafting carnitas for a fine dinner on it’s own, and then beg me to make this soup with the leftovers. The soup gets all the glory and love. I feel like I’m practically cheating because they did all the hard work the day before. I just swoop in with potatoes, cheese, bacon, and broth.
★★★★★
I’m so happy to hear that you like this recipe so much, Mike – especially since your parents put the time into making carnitas! I’ve made carnitas just so we can have this soup, so I get it. You can’t go wrong when you’ve got carnitas, potatoes, cheese, and bacon. 🙂 Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a comment for me. I truly appreciate it! xo
This recipe looks great! We eat a ton of soup during the winter but it tends to only be two types of soup and I have been meaning to expand on that. This looks like a great one to add to our soup rotation. I am sure it would fill us up and warm us up after a long day of shoveling snow. I bet this would taste even better if I used our home-grown potatoes.
I am so envious of your mention of home-grown potatoes, Sarah! Even though potatoes are plentiful in supermarkets, it seems like their quality is often dubious, as evidenced by how quickly they rot. Having home grown potatoes would be such a treat. Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a comment for me! When you make this soup, please let me know what you think! xo
This soup was so good! I had a lot of pork left over and wanted to find some other recipes to use it in. This was a great soup. My husband even said it was really good, and he usually doesn’t like many recipes I find on Pinterest.
★★★★★
I am so happy to hear that you and your husband liked this recipe Shonda! I hope you are able to find some other recipes on here that you both like. 🙂 Thank you so much for taking the time to let me know. I truly appreciate it! xo