Rustic Potato Soup

I want to begin this entry by thanking my father for the suggestion to make potato soup. He said that when he was a kid his parents would make a big pot of potato soup from time to time and that he really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I wont be able to give him any of this soup since I won't be seeing him for at least another week; but he can read this post and see the picture and maybe I will make another batch at his house sometime soon.

Yesterday morning I went grocery shopping and since I had planned on making soup I remembered to buy a leek. But, I forgot to get any milk product thicker than skim. That evening when I started looking up recipe ideas I found that about all needed either heavy cream or half and half or some other thick milk product. After becoming frustrated with the lack of usable recipes (and I was not going back to the grocery store) I decided to just start cooking and see where things went.

I began by browning chopped leek in butter in a big stock pot. Once the leeks were cooked, I added 2 cans of chicken broth (low sodium), some chopped garlic, and a bunch of seasonings (parsley flakes, bay leaves, black pepper, and some other stuff that I will have to look up). I let this come to a boil and then added half of the potatoes. These potatoes were scrubbed and cut into small pieces with the skin still intact. The stock pot was then reduced to a simmer.

In another pot I boiled the rest of the potatoes (they were peeled) in water. Once these were fully cooked, the water was drained off and they were mashed. I then added the mashed potatoes to the stock pot.

At this point the soup looked alright, but still lacked any kind of creaminess. I then remembered that I had some powdered milk and thought that it might do the trick. I slowly added the powdered milk to the simmering soup (stirring the whole time) until I was happy with the consistency. At that point I let the soup simmer for about 45 minutes so that all the potatoes were cooked and that was it.

This was my first time making potato soup and I'm very happy with the outcome. My original plan was not to make rustic-style soup, but that's how it came out and I'm alright with that.