A soup with two textures, tender leeks in a smooth potato soup, nicely flavored by leek cooking juices and chicken broth. Bacon gives both a rustic and a decadent touch.
French traditional cuisine have two other soup recipes using potatoes and leeks, I will try to post them soon : the chilled soupe vichissoise and the crème parmentière. This one is quite healthy as it only have few main ingredients : potatoes, leeks and broth. No cream. Bacon is optional, as you prefer.
For a vegetarian version, forget about bacon and replace chicken broth by vegetable broth. And for a vegan version, replace butter by olive oil.
Here are the main principles of the recipe. Leeks and potatoes are cooked separately but you’ll see it’s not complicated at all.
- Potatoes are cooked in salted water and then drained.
- Meanwhile, leeks are thinly minced and sauté in a pan with melted butter before chicken broth is added. Let leeks simmer for a while.
- Potatoes can then be smashed and pouring a bit of the leek liquid preparation, we get a smooth soup of potatoes flavored by broth and leeks.
- All you need to do then is to add this potato purée to leeks to get an incredible soup with a very pleasant contrast between the different textures.
- Pan fry bacon to serve on top.
Both rustic homecooking recipe and nice dish to serve, don’t you think so? So if you try this recipe, I hope you enjoy it.
This recipe is adapted from one of the most famous French chefs: Bernard Loiseau. I just love when French chefs make simple and accessible recipes.
Bernard Loiseau is a 3-star chef that really has left his mark on the history of French cuisine. Very humble yet perfectionist man, he loved flavorful dishes of his childhood and simple ingredients, focussing in his incredible cuisine on “pure, original flavours which he sought to maximise, while at the same time limiting as far as possible his use of fats and sugar”.
Leek and potato soup from French Chef Bernard Loiseau
Ingredients
- 2 large potato about 400 gr
- 3 large leek
- 1 nut butter
- 750 ml chicken broth
- 200 gr bacon smoked, optional
- salt
- pepper
Instructions
First read the main steps of the recipe
- Potatoes and leeks are cooked separately : potatoes in water and leeks first pan fried and then cooked in broth. Potatoes are mixed with some leek cooking water before adding drained leeks to the preparation. Before serving, pan fry bacon. Photos below are here to gude you.
recipe
- Peel potatoes, cut them into cubes and cook them for about 20 minutes in salted water.
- Meanwhile, thinly mince leeks into ½ cm strips. Melt a large knob of butter in a frying-pan (about 20 gr) and sauté leeks for 5 minutes.
- Add chicken broth and keep cooking for about 15 minutes.
- When potatoes are cooked, drain them, put them in a bowl with a bit leek cooking broth and mix until you get a thick but smooth texture.
- Finally add this potato puree in leek casserole. Leave for a few minutes on low heat while stirring so that the preparation becomes very homogeneous.
- Before serving, quickly fry the bacon in a hot pan.