Comfort Food on a Thursday Night

It's still dull and it's still January, so you might as well have some comfort food. This is one of my favourite home made soups. It ends up being wonderfully creamy and flavourful, but it is full of wonderful vegetables and absolutely no heavy cream. It is time for potato leek soup!

Here is everything you need to make this soup: potatoes, leeks, onion, celery, carrot, a little butter, chicken stock, a little milk, salt and pepper (also some parsley if you have it).

Melt your butter and start chopping. All the vegetables go in to be stirred around with the butter, then over low heat, let the veggies cook a bit in a covered pot.

Add a whole container of chicken broth.

Pour in a little milk, not even half a cup. I always use 1% milk for everything.

After the veggies are nice and soft, season with salt, pepper and parsley. It is time to make this creamy. But first, we need to have a moment of silence. I lost an old friend today:

My good old Braun hand blender has been with me longer than one of my own children. It has blended many pots of soup over the years. In fact, I took this picture and was then going to take a picture of me blending the soup right in the pot, but the poor old thing just gave a dull buzz and ceased to whir. So, I was forced to use my blender to puree the soup, a few ladles at a time. It worked fine, but being able to use the hand blender in the pot is so convenient. You don't have a blender, or a food processor to wash up afterwards.

All nicely blended but still a few little chunks so you don't feel like you're on a liquid diet.

Here's the final result with a nice warm slice of cheesy garlic bread. There are lots of leftovers for later in the week. Good comfort food at this "lovely" time of year!