I love dill. If I ever get married I will
walk down the aisle with a bouquet of dill. Hello, welcome to Home Movies. My name is Alison
Roman and today I'm making Potato Leek Soup. Which I know probably doesn't sound that exciting but
I'm actually quite excited because I feel like this version is really special. It is not
pureed, first of all because I would never. This is a textured soup. It's got a lot going
on. There's dark leafy greens in there. It's tangy. It's creamy. And so much dill that you're
probably still not putting enough dill. LFG. I'm gonna start with a heavy bottom pot.
Basically everything gets cooked down together in one pot and that's it. There's
no like sauteing in advance. You don't have to roast anything. You don't have to strain
anything. You don't have to blend anything. It's kind of like everything happens in here and
then you're done. Okay I just went to the store and that's why none of this is put away. "I just
went to the store." I didn't just go to the store. My point being is that typically like I like to
unpack my groceries when I come home and I just didn't uh because we've been busy shooting
these Home Movies. We are gonna actually use a lot of these greens. Most recipes will tell
you to discard like the dark leafy parts of the leek. The flavor of the dark leafy parts
is a lot more like a green than an onion and I think that makes the whole thing taste a lot
better. So we're gonna get a bowl and we're gonna wash all of these. The easiest and fastest way
to do this is just rinsing them under cool water and all of the dirt and sediment just kind of
settles to the bottom of the bowl. Lift everything out and then you can chop from there and they're
clean. I'm just gonna like let them sit in the cold water for a little bit. So meanwhile I'm just
gonna cut my potatoes. My potatoes, the potatoes. Part of the trick to getting the soup to cook
so quickly is by cutting the potatoes in slices like this. A potato this thin will always
cook faster than a potato that's this thick. What the hell is going on out there? They're like will I honk for Potato Leek Soup.
Medium high heat. About two tablespoons of olive oil. You don't need to measure it. I say you don't
need to measure it as if like I've ever measured it and you don't necessarily need to wait for the
oil to get hot. We're not searing these potatoes. And then I'm gonna cut the leeks and I'm not
gonna worry about like drawing the leaks off because we're adding water to that anyway and
that would be silly. But I do want you to see how dirty this water is and how clean these
leaks are. The sediment that the leeks grow in the dirt is heavy. It's, it's like I mean,
I guess sand is heavy, wow, sand is heavy. I'm gonna use this to water my plants
actually. I have a lot of plants so because we are gonna eat these leeks the
size of which you're chopping them does matter too many leaks at one time get out of here because
they tend to be a little tougher. I'm gonna give them like a full chop whereas the white parts
and the light green parts, I'm just gonna slice. So not only by using the whole leek are you
getting like two different flavor profiles, but you're getting two different textures. The
white and light green parts tend to melt down into something like a bit creamier, a bit stickier,
and these darker pieces tend to stay more intact. I'm gonna season it with salt and pepper.
I'm cooking everything down in this pot just to kind of wilt the greens a little bit
and give everything a head start cooking. Otherwise it's just kind of like boiling
vegetables in stock and like that doesn't sound that appealing to me. Kind of sweat
out the aromatics, lose some of that water so we can add it back. No uh we're
concentrating the flavors is what we're doing. My potatoes, my leeks, my olive oil, my salt,
my pepper have been uh sweating for like five to eight minutes and I'm really not looking
to cook anything through. I'm just looking to sort of like sweat the leeks out. The green parts
are bright green. The light and white green parts are kind of melting into the potatoes. We're
not trying to keep them intact necessarily so you can be a little rough here if you want. So I'm
gonna add water. That's six cups. I'm using Better Than Bouillon. Not sponsored. I really love this
product and this is Better Than Bouillon vegetable base. I'm using four teaspoons. This stuff is
very salty but it's nice because you can just dissolve it right in the pot. You don't need to
like dissolve it in water. And then add that to the thing you can just, everything, everything
in the pot. We're gonna bring that to a simmer. Um why every time. I'm just gonna test a
potato for doneness to just kind of see how long we have to go. It's definitely tender but it's not creamy enough. It's not
like falling apart. I'm gonna eat it. You can use any dark leafy
green that you like here and so I genuinely prefer like the kale because
it sort of holds up in the soup. It doesn't wilt into nothingness. You could always use a mix of
both. Sometimes you know you have like a half a bunch of something lurking in the fridge, you
can mix and match doesn't even have to be kale, doesn't even have to be Swiss chard. It could
be spinach and for this I'm just going to take off the stems. Normally I don't stress
about tearing my kale into two tiny pieces. I'm certainly not going to chop this. Put these
aside. I'll set this aside into a little pile. So tired. I'm also going to top it again with dill.
This will just be a portion of the dill that I end up using. Just you wait. And
you're going to want to keep it a little spriggy, leafy, coarse. Do you think
those jokes are funny to anyone else? We've gotta have at least
one super fan who's gonna catch on. And scallions. I have three and a half scallions.
I put the, I put the other half back. It ripped in the bag. I'm not going back in that fridge. Oh
god it's [ __ ] awful there. So I've uh basically done all I can do. My potatoes and my leeks are
simmering. I've torn my kale. I've chopped my dill. I've sliced my scallions and now I'm gonna
wait for my potatoes to get impossibly tender, like fall apart tender. So meanwhile
I'm just gonna water my plants I guess. Anytime I wash vegetables in a sink, especially
stuff like leeks that need to sit in bowl of water, I like to repurpose the water by watering
my plants. That's a good tip. Reduce, reuse. So our potatoes have been simmering for 30
to 40 minutes. Potatoes and leeks sorry. The liquid itself has evaporated really
nicely but the potatoes are also like very tender with the slightest sort
of suggestion of the spoon they're able to be crushed in the pot. There's
a reason that I don't want to puree the soup and that's because I want to, I want
to like eat the potatoes in the bowl not taste puree so we're nearing the end of our potato
simmering journey. The kale is all going in now. We're not looking to like stew the greens for very
long we're just looking to kind of wilt them down. Let's drink alcohol. I'm not like other
moms. I'm a cool mom. If you're gonna drink, I'd rather you do it in the house. So to finish
this delight, we're gonna add some sour cream just to the end to kind of round out the flavors.
So a quarter cup of sour cream into the pot and then I'm going to add some vinegar and
I'm only adding a teaspoon. Sometimes I add a little bit more because I like
everything to taste like a pickle. I don't know, I find it to be like the
most interesting part of this whole soup. It's so good. I love dill.
No, I love this soup so much. I don't know I'm plating this like I like we're
at a dinner party uh this is a personal soup, but anyway you can top it with a bit more sour cream.
I like a lot of scallions. Just like when I eat my baked potato. And then just like a literal salad
of dill. If you don't like dill, I hate to say it, I think you might want to find a different soup.
It's like asking for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the jelly. Then it's just then
it's like a different, it's a different thing. And there you have it. It's Potato Leek Soup, also
known as PLS. Sounds boring. It's not. I promise um it is perfect for when you don't have
the energy to go to the store because you probably have all of these ingredients in your
house already but it also is just like a very comforting, very simple, surprising soup. Like I
feel like when you make it, you feel oh this soup is a surprise. Surprise it was so good and so
hot and definitely needs so much more dill. You cannot overdo the dill. It really, it does so much
for the soup. When I was a small child, I was, no one saw this coming, when I was a small child
I was really obsessed with the story Stone Soup. When I was writing the newsletter for this
recipe, which is where this recipe first appears, I wrote this whole narrative about stone soup and
how this was sort of like my version of stone soup and then it occurred to me that
I'm not even sure what stone soup was about. But in my head it was like a magical
story where they, they put rocks in a pot and with like a chopped up carrot and potato
and they like made soup and they're like stone soup. Again much like the newsletter,
this will probably be cut from this narrative.
