Potato & Leek Soup

This is my "souper" inaugural post. 

Fear not, I will not include word play in every single post (in addition to the blog name)... but, to be honest, I do think I'm pretty punny ;)

We had our first snow of the season (which is probably clear to anyone reading this since my guess is that all of my followers live in Cleveland... and are related to me...) so I thought that a hearty soup was the most natural choice for dinner tonight.  I had 2 potatoes and some bacon in the fridge so I put them to good use and made potato leek soup.  I had some trouble getting it to the right consistency but it turned out really well!

I used four large russet potatoes but you can certainly get away with fewer or smaller potatoes.  You will just need to adjust the liquid amounts.  Poke them with a fork an bake them at 450 for about an hour.

While the potatoes are cooking, cut up 3 leeks.  It's important to be really careful when washing & preparing leeks because dirt gets between each layer.  I sliced them down the center and then chopped them all up.  I only used the white and light green parts.  Set them aside. 

When the potatoes are done cooking & are cooling, fry up the bacon.

The bacon will be reserved for later but you'll need the grease to cook the leeks.  You can obviously leave the bacon on a paper towel until you use it.  But if you're a freak like me, you will put it in a seasonally appropriate bowl... so that your roommate can make fun of you & you can have another dish to clean!

Use the bacon grease to cook the leeks.  I also threw in a clove of minced garlic.  Cook them until they became tender -- about 4-5 minutes. 

While the leeks are cooking, scoop the potatoes out of the skin.  Once the leeks are done, add the potatoes to the leek mixture.

Add one cup of milk and one cup of vegetable stock to the pot.  You can also throw in some seasonings -- I used a bit of cayenne pepper, paprika, black pepper and salt (though I'm not sure the salt is typically necessary -- I accidentally bought unsalted vegetable stock!).  Once everything is heated through, you'll need to puree it all.  I had to do it in a few increments in order to make sure it was all liquified. 

Once everything is pureed, put it back in the pot to reheat it and thin it out.  I used 4 large potatoes which was good in terms of quantity but consequently the soup was very thick.  I kept adding little bits of vegetable stock until it was the desired consistency.

Serve with cheese, bacon (from the seasonally appropriate bowl) and some green onions.

Enjoy :)