Creamy Potato and Leek Soup

<p>Some soups need a clever twist to earn their keep. This one needs the opposite: restraint, and a bit of patience with the leeks. Potato and leek is the plainest pairing in the book, four or five ingredients and a pot, but the difference between a beige, gluey disappointment and a bowl of silk comes down to two decisions. You sweat the vegetables slowly in butter rather than rushing them, and you thicken the soup by blending the potatoes themselves rather than reaching for flour or a mountain of cream. Get those right and it tastes far richer than its short list of ingredients has any right to.</p> <h2 id="a-soup-built-on-suspicion">A soup built on suspicion</h2><div class="ad-unit ad-in-article" aria-label="Advertisement"> <span class="ad-label">Advertisement</span> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block;text-align:center" data-ad-client="ca-pub-3726833845844946" data-ad-slot="3291553914" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins> <script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script> </div> <p>The potato reached Europe from the Andes in the second half of the sixteenth century, carried back by Spanish ships, and Europeans distrusted it for a long time. It belonged to the nightshade family, it was not mentioned in the Bible, and its knobbly tubers looked diseased to eyes used to grain. It took famine, and a fair amount of royal propaganda, to change minds: the French agronomist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier spent the 1770s and 1780s convincing France that the potato was food fit for people rather than pigs, which is why so many French potato dishes still bear his name.</p> <p>Once accepted, the potato earned its place because it thrived in poor, wet soils where grain failed, and a single field could feed a family through winter. Potato soup grew straight out of that thrift, a way to stretch a little butter and a bone of stock across many bowls. By the nineteenth century versions had settled into the kitchens of Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia, each adding its own dairy and herbs. The most famous descendant is the chilled French vichyssoise, a smooth potato-and-leek soup popularised at the Ritz-Carlton in New York in 1917 by the chef Louis Diat, who based it on the hot leek-and-potato soup his mother made in Vichy. Served hot, as here, it is closer to that homely original than to the hotel version.</p> <div class="recipe-card" id="recipe"> <div class="recipe-card-head"><p class="recipe-card-title">Creamy Potato and Leek Soup</p> <div class="recipe-card-actions"><a class="recipe-pin" href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?description%3dCreamy%2bPotato%2band%2bLeek%2bSoup%26media%3dhttps%253A%252F%252Fmedia.vo.rs%252Fcreamy-potato-soup.jpg%26url%3dhttps%253A%252F%252Fvo.rs%252Fstory%252Fcreamy-potato-soup%252F" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" aria-label="Save to Pinterest"><i class="fab fa-pinterest-p fa-fw"></i>&nbsp;Save</a><button type="button" class="recipe-print" onclick="window.print()" aria-label="Print recipe"><i class="fas fa-print fa-fw"></i>&nbsp;Print</button> </div> </div> <div class="recipe-meta"><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Serves</span>6 servings</span><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Prep</span>15 min</span><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Cook</span>50 min</span><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Cuisine</span>European</span><span class="recipe-meta-item"><span class="recipe-meta-label">Course</span>Soup</span></div> <div class="recipe-cols"> <div class="recipe-ingredients"> <h3>Ingredients</h3> <ul><li>800 g potatoes, peeled and diced</li><li>300 g leek, sliced thinly</li><li>75 g butter</li><li>2 bay leaves</li><li>1.5 L chicken stock</li><li>1 dl whipping cream</li><li>1 tsp white pepper</li><li>1/2 tsp salt</li><li>2 garlic cloves, minced</li><li>200 g diced bacon</li><li>Fresh chives, for garnish</li></ul> </div> <div class="recipe-method"> <h3>Method</h3> <ol><li>Peel and dice the potatoes and rinse and slice the leek.</li><li>Heat the butter in a large pot and gently cook the potatoes and leeks for about 8 minutes.</li><li>Stir in the garlic and bay leaves and cook for a further 2 minutes.</li><li>Add the stock, bring to a low boil and simmer for 35 minutes until the potatoes are tender.</li><li>Remove the bay leaves and blend the soup until smooth.</li><li>Return to a simmer and stir in the cream, white pepper and salt, adjusting to taste.</li><li>Fry the diced bacon in a separate pan until crisp and drain.</li><li>Ladle into bowls and top with crispy bacon and chopped chives.</li></ol> </div> </div> </div><h2 id="where-potato-soup-goes-wrong">Where potato soup goes wrong</h2> <p>The classic mistake is over-blending. Potatoes are packed with starch granules, and when you whizz cooked potato hard and long, especially in a powerful jug blender, you smash those granules and release enough free starch to turn the soup gluey and elastic, like wallpaper paste. Blend just until smooth and then stop. A stick blender is gentler than a countertop one for exactly this reason.</p> <p>The second mistake is rushing the leeks. Sweated slowly in butter they turn sweet and mellow; fried hard and fast they catch, colour and turn bitter, and no amount of cream will hide it afterwards. Keep the heat gentle and be patient. The third is under-seasoning: a smooth potato soup with too little salt tastes of nothing, so season in stages and taste at the end. White pepper rather than black is a small point of pride here, giving warmth without speckling the pale soup with dark flecks.</p> <p>If you love this style of gentle, blended vegetable soup, the same slow-sweat-then-blend method underpins a <a href="/story/spiced-carrot-ginger-soup/">spiced carrot and ginger soup</a>, while a <a href="/story/tom-kha-coconut-soup/">tom kha coconut soup</a> shows how far the humble bowl can travel with a different set of aromatics.</p> <h2 id="why-potato-and-leek-belong-together">Why potato and leek belong together</h2><div class="ad-unit ad-in-article" aria-label="Advertisement"> <span class="ad-label">Advertisement</span> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block;text-align:center" data-ad-client="ca-pub-3726833845844946" data-ad-slot="3291553914" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins> <script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script> </div> <p>The pairing is not an accident of thrift alone. Leeks and potatoes cook down at almost the same rate and share a quiet, savoury sweetness that reinforces rather than competes, so the finished soup tastes of one thing rather than two. The leek brings a gentle allium fragrance and a silkiness the potato lacks, while the potato brings the body and starch the leek could never supply on its own. Onions would give a sharper, more aggressive note; leeks stay soft and rounded, which is why every classic version, from Irish farmhouse pottage to the French vichyssoise, reaches for the leek rather than its cousin.</p> <p>The floury potato matters as much as the leek. A waxy salad potato, such as Charlotte or new potatoes, holds its shape and resists breaking down, so the soup stays thin and watery no matter how long you blend it. Maris Piper and King Edward are high in starch and low in moisture, and they collapse readily into the broth, which is exactly what you want: it is their released starch that thickens the soup and gives that spoon-coating body without a scrap of flour. If all you have is a waxy potato, the soup will still taste good, but expect to lean a little harder on the cream for richness.</p> <h2 id="the-clever-twist-that-is-no-twist">The clever twist that is no twist</h2> <p>There is a temptation, faced with so plain a soup, to gild it, with truffle oil, a fistful of cheese, a swirl of chilli crisp. Resist most of it. The one addition I always make is a knob of cold butter whisked in off the heat at the very end, just before the bacon and chives go on. It emulsifies into the hot soup and gives a glossy, restaurant sheen and a final round richness that cream alone does not provide. This is the same finishing trick, borrowed from French sauce-making, that lifts a pan gravy or a risotto: a little cold fat, beaten in at the last second, transforms the texture. Keep everything else honest and let the potato and leek speak.</p> <h2 id="substitutions-storage-and-variations">Substitutions, storage and variations</h2> <p>To keep it vegetarian, use vegetable stock and swap the bacon for croutons fried in butter or a handful of crisp fried onions. For a lighter soup, replace the cream with whole milk or leave it out entirely and rely on the blended potato for body. A grating of mature Cheddar or a spoonful of soured cream stirred in at the end pushes it towards a loaded-baked-potato flavour, and a little sweated celery or a diced carrot added with the leeks brings extra depth without changing its character.</p> <p>The soup keeps in the fridge for up to four days and thickens noticeably as it cools; loosen it with a splash of stock or milk when reheating over a low heat, stirring so it does not catch. It freezes reasonably well for up to three months, though the texture is silkiest fresh. Cool it completely before freezing in portions, and thaw overnight in the fridge for a quick supper. Fry the bacon fresh each time, as it loses its crispness on storage and is too good to waste.</p> <p>One caution when reheating a blended potato soup: bring it back to temperature gently and stir it often, never letting it boil hard. Vigorous reheating can make an already-starchy soup turn gluey or catch and scorch on the base of the pan, and a scorched note runs through the whole batch. If a reheated portion has thickened to a paste, whisk in warm stock a splash at a time until it flows off the spoon again, then taste and add a little more salt, since chilling dulls the seasoning. Served with a hunk of bread and butter, a bowl of this is one of the cheapest genuinely good suppers you can make, and it improves the day after it is made once the flavours have settled.</p>