Recipe Notes: Country-style Potato-Leek Soup with Kielbasa

5 March 2020

Recipe from All Time Best Soups, America's Test Kitchen, 2016, p. 96; also available online.

Earlier this year we had some homemade soup that included leeks. This reminded me of just how much I enjoy leeks in soup so I looked for a leek soup recipe, and this is what I found. One of the variations of this simple recipe was to add kielbasa, which we enjoy, so I added it to provide a more complete soup.

This recipe uses a lot of leeks! You start with 4-5 pounds of leeks and cut off the dark green parts, so there is a lot of waste, too. The white and light green parts of the leeks were cut in half lengthwise  and then into 1-inch thick slices. These were washed well and cooked in butter in a Dutch oven until tender. A tablespoon of flour was stirred into the leeks and cooked for a few minutes. Chicken broth, red potatoes (peeled and cut into eighths), and a bay leaf were added and simmered until the potatoes were almost tender. Eight ounces of kielbasa was cut into ½-inch thick slices which were  stirred into the soup The soup was then moved off heat and left to sit for 15 minutes before serving. This soup was easy to make with the biggest chore preparing the large pile of leeks. Total time was 80 minutes.

This is a very simple soup with leek providing the dominant flavor. Especially when it was freshly made, the flavor was very one-note; it was not a complex soup. As is common with soup, the flavor developed over time and the soup was better as a leftover than when freshly made. The kielbasa was a good addition though the slices were a little large and there were not enough of them, averaging about one piece of sausage per bowl of soup. It makes a lot of soup which we enjoyed for several weeks.