Straightforward Creamy Potato, Leek, and Sauerkraut Soup Recipe

I in actual fact enjoy written about my mother’s scorching canine and cabbage soup, one of my favorites from childhood. It’s comforting and simple, and because it turns out, is a riff on a classic Polish soup known as kapusniak. Right here’s a 2nd version I developed.

The root for making the 2nd version of the soup creamy came to me, in a roundabout diagram, from my associate, who has a serious thing for creamy soups. As it occurs, potato-leek soup is one of my all-time favorites. (And, basically, the very first recipe of my possess devising that a chef allowed me to establish apart on a public-facing menu!) In my version of the soup, I cut the classic milk and cream unpleasant with buttermilk, which provides some acidity and brightness to a soup that I otherwise procure somewhat too starch-on-corpulent heavy. With the array of gear I had in entrance of me, I puzzled: What would happen if, as an different of buttermilk for acid, I weak a lawful amount of sauerkraut?

I started by sautéing sliced kielbasa in somewhat vegetable oil unless it change into as soon as properly browned. I then removed it from the pan and saved it to exhaust later as a garnish, leaving that kielbasa corpulent within the pan to add model to the soup. Next, I added hundreds of butter and leeks, reducing the warmth to permit the leeks to gently soften with out getting any colour on them. (The wonder of caramelized alliums change into as soon as not what I change into as soon as after on this dish.) After they had been neatly softened, I added rooster stock, sliced cabbage, and bay leaves. Even though I in most cases exhaust russet potatoes for my potato-leek soup, I chanced on the creamier texture of Yukon Golds labored better here.

On my first try, I at as soon as dumped in a fats pound of sauerkraut with its liquid. Hideous figuring out. As it turns out, acid can inhibit the breakdown of pectin, the carbohydrate glue that holds plant cells collectively. Within the tart liquid supplied by the sauerkraut, my potato chunks never softened. I needed to fish them out and replace them with potato chunks I had cooked individually in boiling water.

Straightforward solutions to quit it as an different is to simmer the soup unless the potatoes are fully softened, then add the sauerkraut and its liquid.

As soon because it comes abet up to a simmer, it is prepared to hit the blender. Some soups will be blended at as soon as within the pot. No longer this one. Even with the winner of our hand blender discovering out at my service, the soup remained unappetizingly corpulent. A scramble within the countertop blender and a trudge by a sexy-mesh strainer are well-known for a silky-delicate texture.

To aid the soup, I add abet about a of the browned kielbasa slices and garnish all the object with chopped contemporary dill and about a drops of in actual fact huge olive oil.

(Diet data is calculated utilizing an ingredient database and desires to be figuring out to be an estimate.)