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A delicious twist on basic spaghetti: Baking it with spinach, sausage and cheese melds the flavors deliciously and creates a one-dish meal that’s almost as good as lasagna—without all the work. Use a smaller or larger amount of meat, as desired, or omit completely for a vegetarian version.

Creamy Potato Leek Soup

Mention leeks and Potato Leek Soup quickly comes to mind for most people. Certain food pairings are meant to be, which is certainly the case with potatoes and leeks. So it’s no surprise this soup classic is so well known and loved. This version alters the classic slightly with the addition of celery and thyme.

Ingredients

Instructions

6 cups potatoes diced to about ½” (about 7-8 med. potatoes)

6 cups Imagine Vegetable Broth (or other comparable quality vegetable or chicken broth)

½ tsp. salt (more or less)

Cook Potatoes In a medium-sized soup pot or very large sauce pan, combine broth and salt. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat while cutting potatoes. Reduce heat to medium if broth begins to boil before potatoes are cut.

Add cut potatoes to broth, cover pan and return to boil over high heat. Then reduce heat to low and simmer potatoes until completely soft, but not mushy or falling apart. Using either an upright or immersion blender, blend mixture briefly, just until enough to smooth potatoes.

6 cups leeks diced to roughly ½” (the white and light green parts of about 3-4 large leeks)

2 Tbsp. butter

1 cup celery, diced to ¼” (about 3-4 large stalks)

1 tsp. dried leaf thyme

SWEAT Aromatics While potatoes cook, SWEAT leeks in butter, over medium heat, in an uncovered pan, for about 10 minutes. Add celery and thyme and continue sweating another 5-10 minutes, until leeks are tender and sweet tasting, but celery is still slightly crisp. Avoid letting leeks dry out while cooking. If their edges should begin to whither or shrivel, cover pan, add 1-2 Tbsp. of broth, or both.

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

¼ cup minced fresh chives (optional garnish)

Finish and Serve Combine pureed potatoes and sweated aromatics in soup pot used to cook potatoes. Taste and add more salt and a few fairly generous grinds of pepper, to taste.

Cover pot and bring soup to boil over medium heat, then reduce heat to medium low and simmer 5 minutes. Turn off heat, cover pan and allow flavors to meld for 10-15 more minutes.

Taste one last time, adding more salt and pepper, to taste. Serve garnished with chives.

Serves: 4

Potato Blending Perils

Blending potatoes is not something to be done on autopilot. They can quickly turn into a gooey blob, particularly when whirred under the force of a food processor. That’s why this recipe recommends using a blender and that only very briefly. If using an upright blender, blend in two batches to avoid overworking the potatoes, and be sure to include plenty of the cooking broth with each batch for best results. After blending the first half of potatoes, pour into a large bowl, then do the second half and return everything to the soup pot. Using an inexpensive immersion blender avoids these shuffling problems–and doesn’t dirty a big appliance!

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For Potato Leek Soup, the leeks are diced fairly small, to about ½,” by first slicing lengthwise into ½” sticks. These “sticks” can then be gathered together and quickly cut crosswise into ½” dice.

The leeks are then sweated in a large saute pan while the potatoes are boiled in a deep soup pot until soft but not mushy.

Save time by simply pureeing the potatoes in their cooking pot using an immersion blender. Then stir in the sweated leeks and simmer a few more minutes.

Blending Options

This recipe purees just the potatoes and then adds the sauteed leeks, leaving the soup with a combination of texture and smoothness. For a completely smooth soup, combine the cooked potatoes and sauteed leeks and puree everything together.

Salt and Pepper

Always be careful and taste before adding salt to a recipe, particularly if salt has already been added or other ingredients (like broth) contain a fair amount. This caution is true even with potatoes, which generally need a lot of salt.

The Leek-Potato Ratio

Potato leek soups vary in their leek to potato ratio, depending upon whether it is essentially a leek soup with some potatoes thrown in for body, or a potato soup with leeks used for a little unique flavor. This recipe falls in the middle. Experiment by adding more or fewer leeks to see if you like the flavor better.

Vichyssoise

“Vichyssoise” is version of potato leek soup made with a little cream and/or milk. This potato leek soup can be easily transformed into Vichyssoise by adding ½ to ¾ cup heavy cream, a combination of cream and milk, or plain soy milk. Interestingly, our family preferred the “un-creamed” version. What makes Potato Leek Soup so memorable is the subtle sweetness of the leeks, a flavor that gets diminished, if not overwhelmed, by cream and milk. Experiment yourself and see if the pureed potatoes don’t provide plenty of comforting creaminess without smoothing over the flavor of the leeks.

Ingredient Notes

1. Yukon Gold Potatoes As with most potato dishes, I recommend Yukon golds, as they bring a lot of flavor to the soup on their own. However, Joy of Cooking recommends a baking potato like russet or Idaho, since it falls apart easily to form a smooth soup. It’s worth experimenting to find your favorite.

2. Imagine Vegetable Broth A soup is only as good as the base supporting it. Be sure to use either a homemade or readymade broth that supports your soup with real flavor, not just a lot of salt.

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