Nourishing Potato Leek Soup

This is actually my fave soup evah! Or maybe it is tied with my Mushroom and Sherry soup, tough call. Either way this soup is nourishing and delicious and it utilizes one of my fave veggies… the leek. In order to make the soup green you need to use all of this delicious vegetable from the white part to the dark green. Often times recipes only call for the light part of the leek but I use the whole shebang. Part of why that works so well is because I blend the majority of the soup to make it smooth and creamy, not so chunky. It is hard for me to pin down a concrete recipe for you since I am more of a kitchen witch…. just tossing stuff in the cauldron and seeing what magic emerges. But I think I have made this soup enough times to give out a recipe.

Ingredients:

2-3 Leeks chopped, whites and dark greens
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 Tbsp grass fed butter
1.5 Pounds potatoes, chopped (I used red and fingerlings in combination)
3 Cups vegetable broth
1 Cup milk or cream
4 Tbsp Neufchatel cheese or cream cheese
1 Tbsp dried dill
Sea Salt
Pepper

Optional: white cheddar cheese and/or crumbled, pastured bacon for toppings

I have included different options like milk/cream or Neufchatel/cream cheese simply so that you can make it as nourishing and/or savory as you want. This soup can be quite rich and very generous in the calories department if you want to watch that sort of thing. And of course meat eaters will love bacon in this soup.

Directions:

Clean leeks thoroughly by rinsing and/or soaking. These babies are grown in sandy soil and if you don’t wash properly you will end up with gritty soup. I chop off the end and then split them down the middle lengthwise. I wash them really well by letting water run through each layer and then I chop them up. Add these to your pan or dutch oven along with the garlic and saute in butter (or bacon grease if you are using bacon). Saute them until they are starting to get soft.

Add the potatoes and vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and let simmer for 30 minutes or until the pototes are soft.

At this point you are going to want to blend 3/4 of your soup to make it nice and creamy. If you don’t want to blend it up for whatever reason you will likely have to add flour to thicken it up. Most times I use my Vita-Mix so that I can add the milk and cheese along with the soup and mix that all together well before returning it to the pot. Sometimes I use a handy dandy immersion blender. It depends on which one is clean, LOL.

So add the neufchatel, milk and dill and blend well. This is what you end up with. A creamy, dreamy, green tinted soup that kids love.