Generally, they will return the same URL, as bloginfo( 'url' ) will call home_url internally with any arguments, and the default first argument ($path) of home_url is the empty string. However, bloginfo( 'url' ) will apply an additional filter to it, namely the home_url filter.
Common pratice is to use home_url, indeed with esc_url (even though home_url() returning an invalid URL will yield bigger problems anyway :-)). In WordPress core, bloginfo( 'url' ) is practically never used anymore. Instead, home_url( "https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/" ) is used.
So, summarizing: use esc_url( home_url( "https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/" ) ).