By far, my family’s favourite soup is creamy leek and potato. I am a little embarrassed to say that until a few years ago, I purchased it in those Knorr Cream of Leek sachets of powder that you bring back to life with milk and water. Thankfully, I have discovered how easy it is to make delicious leek and potato soup.
Since my Knorr days, I have experimented with many leek and potato soup recipes and developed one inspired by America’s Test Kitchen that I am happy with. However, this week after reading Alton Brown’s recipe and applying what I learned in culinary school, I have developed my best leek and potato soup yet!
Here are the four things that made this soup so great:
- Start with a great stock – I used a homemade chicken stock that I carefully skimmed and let simmer for 3 hours.
- Flavouring the stock – to intensify the leek flavour of the soup, I took the strained stock, added the green parts of the leeks and brought it back to a simmer for about 20 minutes.
- Adding buttermilk to the soup – this is something new for me and that I took from Alton Brown’s recipe. It was a great addition that balanced the soup with acidity and made it more creamy
- Blitz the soup and then blitz some more – this was taken from my experience in one of my labs at culinary school. When making blended soups, our teacher in Cafe Production would make us blitz the soup with an immersion blender for 10 or more minutes which seemed excessive at the time. But now, it is the only way to make a pureed soup smooth and silky.
From my family’s reaction,it was obvious that the time spent on the stock and on pureeing the soup and the addition of the buttermilk were all worth it. After his first spoonful, my husband turned to me and said: “Mmmmm, this is really good. Did you do something different?” Obviously, that put a huge smile on my face!
- 8 cups high quality chicken stock, preferably homemade
- 6 leeks, white parts sliced and green parts washed and reserved
- 75 g of double smoked bacon, cut into lardon
- 4 medium sized Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
- 2 garlic cloves, grated on a Microplane
- ½ cup buttermilk
- ½ cup 35% cream
- Sour cream and chopped chives for serving
- Salt to taste
- For the spice bag:
- 4 sprigs of thyme
- 5-6 whole peppercorns
- 2 bay leaves
- In a stock pot, add your stock and the washed green leaves from 3 of the leeks and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat and let simmer for about 20 minutes and strain.
- Meanwhile, in a large heavy saucepan, render the bacon over medium heat. Once rendered, remove the bacon with a slotted spoon leaving the fat in the pan (if you don't have about 3 tablespoons, you can add some butter). Note: If the bacon fat has lots of dark bits left from the bacon, you can strain it through a sieve lined with cheese cloth. This will remove the dark bits and will avoid darkening the color of your soup.
- Add the leeks, season well and cook for 5 minutes till softened, making sure that they do not brown.
- Add the potatoes cooking for another 5 minutes again making sure they do not brown.
- Finally add the garlic, mix well and cook for one minute.
- Add the stock and the sachet and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 30 minutes.
- Remove the sachet and off the heat, blend the soup with an immersion blender till very smooth (about 10 minutes). Add the buttermilk and the cream and mix into the soup. Season to taste.
- Ladle the soup into bowls and top with a dollop of sour cream and some chives.
Leave a Reply