Let’s call the pot black here: winter sucks.

Sure there’s fun parts to it—snowboarding, skiing, building snowmen / snow penises, beerbogganing (tobogganing with beer), and obviously presents at X-Mas. But for the most part, winter is the shittiest season. It’s cold, there’s less sun, public transit starts to feel like a SARS quarantine with everyone coughing and sneezing, and people in general look like they hate life.

So, how do you make a shitty situation less shitty? With the case of winter, the answer is always soup. SOUP. Specifically potato and leek soup. It’s the one good thing you can look forward to after a day of drudging through snow to get to class, only to spend the entire lecture with 90% of the room sniffling incessantly. Plus soup is super easy to make, it’s cheap, and you can make a ton and freeze it so you’ll have food for days. (SEE: SARS quarantine). Now that you have the cooking essentials and a rough guideline, let’s cook.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to make this bomb-ass soup, I should warn you that as a self-proclaimed “super-chef” I rarely follow recipes or use measuring devices. Instead I throw a scoop of this and a handful of that. But the nice thing about soup is that they’re pretty forgiving—so if you use a handful of one thing when you were supposed to use a scoop, there’s still a good chance you didn’t completely mess everything up.

Ingredients:

  • Butter (about ⅓ of a stick)
  • Goose fat (1 – 2 scoops) *optional, if not, increase butter
  • Leeks (1 – 1 ½ stalks)
  • Garlic (half of a head or like 6-7 cloves)
  • Chicken stock (1 container)
  • White potatoes (7-8 regular sized potatoes)
  • Fresh rosemary & thyme (half a handful, finely chopped)
  • Salt & pepper (fair amount)
  • Half & half cream (½ of a 1L carton)

Instructions:

  • In a real big pot, melt the goose fat over low-medium heat.
  • Coarsely chop the leeks. Peel and chop the garlic.
  • Add leeks, garlic and butter to pot and sauté until leeks turn brown.
  • Let the leeks cook a tiny bit longer (but not too much; the browning will give the soup a nice smokiness. But if they burn your soup, it will taste like shit).
  • Add chicken stock, potatoes, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper, cover and cook over low-medium heat.
  • When you can easily slide a fork into the potatoes and they’re nice and soft (about an hour-ish in) add the cream and let simmer for another 20-ish minutes.
  • Remove from heat and use a blender / food processor to blend all ingredients into a nice warm hug.
  • Eat. And share with your roommates.

Delicious, amiright?!

Photo courtesy of Penguin Cakes.