Farm Boy To Foodie: Full of Leeks

A few weekends ago Joan and I finally got around to making Potato Leek Soup. I really wish we would have made it sooner as it was so easy to make. It’s really just three ingredients: potatoes, leeks and broth. The hardest part really was finding room in our grocery bag to fit the seven leeks that we needed for the soup. However it was fun to continually make joking puns that not only our bag “had sprung a leek” but other things around the house did too. I even held up one to the ceiling so I could go, “Uh oh, our ceiling has a leek!” (This is what my wife has to put up with everyday.)

As I said, making the actual soup was easy. First, I did a simple scrubbing of the leeks and Yukon Gold potatoes. Next, I cut the greens and the root of the leeks off. Then to get all of the dirt out of the leek’s layers, I cut them in half, swooshed them around in the sink full of water, and then let them sit in that water (an Alton Brown tip). Then after doing that with all the leeks, I dried them and chopped them. I moved them to a sauté pan and sweated the leeks until tender. While the leeks were sweating away, I moved on to the potatoes. I just simply peeled them and sliced them thinly. I suppose I could have diced them as well. The potatoes and leeks were then just thrown in the stock pot where I then added essentially enough chicken broth to cover. Next, I just let the pot simmer until the potatoes where soft. To finish things off we hit the soup with the immersion or stick blender to smooth things out and then just seasoned with salt and pepper.

Freshly cleaned produce

It’s also worth mentioning that while the soup was simmering, I still kept myself busy by making some Irish soda bread (as you can see there in the picture.) My first attempt at making the bread – and any bread in general – was done earlier in December. Both times I came out with good bread, however the second attempt went a lot more smoothly. I learned my lesson from the first time: You can never have too much flour on the board when you’re kneading. Well, I’m sure you can but I’m still far from getting to that point. Just like the soup, the Irish soda bread also is very easy to make with just a few ingredients - just flour, salt, buttermilk and baking soda. I do want to move up to making more normal bread, like a nice crusty white bread, which I’ll hopefully have time to make this week.