Potato Leek Soup

I love to make soup when it's cool outside, and even sometimes when it's not! A good soup is such great comfort food! This is one of my favorite recipes. It takes a lot of prep time, but it is delicious and good for sharing with a group!

A note about kitchen tools: I use my submersible handheld blender for this soup (and for lots of other soups). It was recently not working properly and I could not get the texture of the soup right without it! The other option would be to use a food processor or a blender - at the end of the preparation, you would remove the soup in batches to the food processor or stand blender and cream/blend it. The best I can suggest if you don't have any of these tools is that at the end when the potatoes are super-soft, you could use a traditional potato masher in the soup pan and then stir the soup to blend it together. My potato leek soup is always very creamy and very smooth in texture, but some people prefer (I guess) for it to be more mushy and chunky.

Ingredients:
5-6 medium to large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into about 1.5 inch cubes / chunks
2-3 medium-sized leeks, cut into small pieces (by the way, if you haven't used leeks much before, here is a link to a helpful blog with great tips and instructions for cutting up the leeks: http://startcooking.com/blog/183/Leeks)
1 small onion, chopped (I use a yellow onion)
1 stick of butter
1/2 package of bacon, cut into about 1 inch pieces before cooking
2 cans of chicken stock
1/2 pint of whipping cream (you can actually use a little more either whipping cream or half and half if you want it to be even more creamy)
Parsley
Salt
Pepper

For toppings (as desired):
Shredded cheese
Cooked bacon pieces
Chives

Start by preparing all of your ingredients. You won't have time to be chopping, etc once the soup gets going. I start by peeling and chopping the potatoes, cutting up the leeks, and chopping the onion, and I set each of these aside separately in prep bowls until later. I then cut up the bacon into smaller pieces using kitchen scissors so it will be ready to add to the pot.

Melt the butter in the bottom of a large pot. Add the bacon, and cook until bacon is done and has rendered most of its fat / grease. Note, you don't want to cook it until it is extremely crispy, as this will mean the grease starts to evaporate and even burn. Remove bacon from the pan but leave the liquid (now a combination of butter and bacon grease) in the pot. You may need to turn off the heat as soon as the bacon is done to prevent the grease from starting to burn before you go on to the next step.

Add the onion and the leeks to the pan and cook until the onion starts to become translucent. Add chopped potatoes and stir them into the hot grease. Add chicken broth and bring mixture to a boil. If potatoes are not covered, you can add additional chicken broth. Reduce heat and simmer / cook until potatoes are almost done / starting to turn soft, then mix in the cream. Also add salt and pepper at this point. (I use probably 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 1/8 teaspoon of pepper). Bring mixture back to a boil and cook until potatoes are starting to fall apart.

Using the hand-held blender, blend / cream the soup while it is still hot and in the pan. If you are worried about overcooking, you can turn off the heat completely at this point. Submerge the metal end of the blender in the soup mixture and blend, moving the blender around the pot frequently. Stir with a large wooden spoon, and check the texture to see if more blending is needed.

Stir in parsley, and additional salt and pepper to taste, if needed. Serve hot with shredded cheese, crumpled bacon pieces and chopped chives as garnishes. Enjoy! This will make enough soup for about 6 servings, you can easily double it for a large group!