About two weeks ago Peter, over at Greek Food and Beyond, posted a recipe for Creamy Asparagus Soup. I love Creamy soups, my favorite is the Chicken Pasta soup that J.Alexander’s serves, so when I found a recipe that looked appetizing I needed to go for it. Sure, I have no experience with making any creamy-based soup but I wasn’t going to let that stop me!

I made three small changes to this recipe, but we’ll get to that in a second.

The Recipe

1/4 cup olive oil

3 leeks (white parts)

2 bay leaves (crushed, spines removed)

1 tsp dried thyme

3 Russet potatoes

8-9 cups of chicken stock

2 bunches of asparagus

1/2 cup of cream

1 tsp salt

pepper to taste

1 lb cooked dark chicken chunks (I used the leftovers from the Lemon Chicken)

And the process…

In a nice sized soup pot add your olive oil over medium heat and add the chopped leeks, crushed bay leaves thyme and chicken, stir for about 10

Now grate your potatoes through the large holes of your box grater and stir in with the leeks. Simmer for about five minutes.

While the leek/potato/chicken mix is cooking, cut your asparagus separating the tips and the stem.

Add your stock, salt, pepper and the chopped asparagus stems, bring to a boil. Simmer for about 25 minutes.

Creamy Asparagus Soup? Really?

In a second pot bring water to a boil, add your asparagus tips and boil for 2-3 minutes. Remove and blanche the tips in ice-cold water.

Once the soup is ready puree with a hand blender while adding the cream (I went with one cup).

Place in a bowl, add your asparagus tips – top with freshly ground black pepper and Parmesan cheese.

That looks better, almost like Creamy Chicken Asparagus Soup!

Peter has a great soup recipe here.  I couldn’t stop eating this, and I even put some in the freezer for later. On my next go around I plan on making the soup a wee bit thicker, creamier… but one who enjoys a good creamy soup cannot go wrong here.

My changes – I added one tsp of salt as I used stock which, usually, is lower salt.  I ground up the bay leaves to a nice flake consistency, and I added the chicken for a little extra something. Have fun!