Potato Leek Soup

Ingredients

• 3 Tbsp Unsalted butter
• 3 medium (about 1 lb / 450 g trimmed) Leeks, white and pale green parts, sliced and rinsed
• 1½ lb / 680 g Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes
• 2 Garlic cloves, minced
• 4 cups / 960 ml Vegetable broth, unsalted or low-sodium
• 1 Bay leaf
• ¾ tsp, plus more at the end Kosher salt
• ¼ tsp Black pepper
• ½ cup / 120 ml Heavy cream
• 2 Tbsp Fresh chives or parsley, chopped

Method

1. Slice the leeks and put them in a large bowl of cold water. Swish so the grit sinks. Lift the leeks out with your hands and drain them. Do not pour the bowl through a colander, or the grit lands back on the leeks.
2. Melt the butter in a heavy pot over medium heat. Add the leeks and a pinch of the salt. Cook, stirring now and then, until they are soft and sweet, about 8–10 minutes. Do not let them brown. If the bottom starts to color, lower the heat and add a splash of broth.
3. Stir in the garlic and cook 30 seconds. Add the potatoes, the rest of the broth, the bay leaf, the remaining salt, and the pepper. The potatoes should be barely covered. Add a splash of water if a few cubes stick up.
4. Bring the pot to a simmer, then cover and cook on low until a cube of potato crushes easily against the side of the pot, about 15–20 minutes.
5. Take out the bay leaf. Blend the soup with an immersion blender until it is smooth, or mash some of the potatoes and leave the rest in soft chunks. If you use a standing blender, fill it only halfway, hold the lid with a towel, and blend in batches.
6. Stir in the cream. Warm the soup on low until it is hot. Do not let it boil hard after the cream goes in, or the cream can separate. Taste and add salt a pinch at a time. Serve with the chives.

Nutrition

Kitchen estimate only, not lab-verified. A potato soup finished with cream. The broth you buy, and the salt you add at the end, move the sodium.

Guest diet / allergy swaps

Short kitchen notes for guests. A fuller gluten-free or dairy-free ingredient list, when we have one, is in the panels below.

• Low-sodium friendly

  Start with unsalted vegetable broth and ¼ tsp salt. Taste at the end before you add more. A regular boxed broth is the salty part of this pot. This is a kitchen note, not a low-sodium diet.

  • United States: Unsalted broth and a light hand with salt. Taste at the end.
  • United Kingdom: Use a low-salt stock, or water plus a small pinch of salt, and taste before you add more.

• Gluten-free style

  Potatoes, leeks, butter, and cream have no wheat. Some vegetable broths use wheat or barley. Read the carton and use one that does not list them.

  • United States: Potatoes, leeks, butter, and cream have no wheat. The broth carton is the package that can hide wheat or barley.
  • United Kingdom: Read the stock. Barley and wheat flour show up in some vegetable stocks.

• Dairy-free

  Cook the leeks in 3 Tbsp olive oil instead of butter. Use ½ cup unsweetened plain oat milk or unsweetened plain coconut milk in place of the cream. Coconut is sometimes grouped with tree nuts. Read that carton. The broth is unchanged, so this swap is not automatically gluten-free.

  • United States: Olive oil for the butter, and unsweetened plain oat or coconut milk for the cream. Read the coconut allergen box.
  • United Kingdom: The same oil and plain plant-milk swap. Skip sweetened cartons.

• Vegan

  The pot as written uses butter and cream, so it is not vegan. Use the dairy-free swap: olive oil for the butter, and unsweetened plain oat milk or coconut milk for the cream. Keep the broth vegetable.

• No leeks

  Use 2 sliced yellow onions, cooked the same way until soft. The soup will taste more like onion than leek.