Potato, Leek, and Mushroom Soup

Fall has arrived, and with it, the cooler temperatures that often lead to slew of soups. I love soup. It’s easy to swap out some of what you have for something you don’t, seasoning is adjusted according to taste, and one large pot can feed a crowd for supper, or one person for a whole week — even longer if it’s frozen! It also helps that a bowl of soup goes great with grilled cheese, one of the best foods ever invented. This week I had a craving for mushrooms, so I decided to make a batch of Potato, Leek, and Mushroom Soup. For this recipe, an entire pound of earthy mushroom along with fragrant leeks and tender potatoes are cooked and then blended with stock, cream (or milk), and a generous helping of paprika and fresh thyme.

The original recipe called for an assortment of wild mushrooms, but I could only get my hands on portabellas, which still tasted great. It also called for cream, which (no doubt) gives the soup a luxurious richness, but since I was trying to keep things light, I opted to use low-fat milk instead. As it says somewhere on a refrigerator magnet, “What the mouth misses the waistline forgives.” This is a soup you can serve chunky, semi-smooth, or pureed depending on your texture preference. The original recipe called for the soup to be pureed in batches in the blender, but if you have a stick blender (also called an immersion blender) you can blend it right in the pot. I blended mine quite a bit, but since I like getting some chunks of potato and mushroom, next time I’ll reserve a few cups of veggies before blending so I can add them back to the pot.

GET THE RECIPE: Potato, Leek, and Mushroom Soup Recipe

This post was first published in 2013 and has been updated.