Creamy Vegan Potato Leek Soup with Smoky Vegan Bacon Bits | Dairy-Free Comfort Food!

Hey guys, welcome to My Vegan Kitchen, I'm Michelle. Today we're gonna make a simple, easy soup. Since it's soup season and I know you guys love soup, we're gonna make a leek potato soup. It's perfect for the holidays or any time. So if you haven't subscribed, go ahead, hit that subscribe button, tap on that bell, and let's cook. So welcome to my kitchen. Today we're going to make a roasted garlic leek potato soup. We're going to start first with our garlic and I went ahead and I put it in a foil. I cut the top off as you can see and I added a little olive oil and I'm just going to close it up in the foil. I'm going to stick this in the air fryer and let that roast while we prepare the rest of the vegetables. Now to prepare the leeks. Now leeks is one of those vegetables that I'm sure you guys have walked past a million times in the grocery store. But when I tell you I love leeks, I love the flavor. It's very much like it's in the onion and garlic family. So it has that flavor, but a little bit more mild. And it does have a little bit of sweetness to it. Why I love it. it's loaded with fiber it's good for you it's good for your gut it's an antioxidant and it has tons of vitamins and minerals that are healthy for us so we're going to add it to the soup to help balance out the starchiness of the potatoes let's clean this bad boy now leeks are really dirty they're very dirty so you want to make sure you clean them really well what i normally do first let's move these to the side and they normally come like three in a bunch but um or sometimes they'll come single but i would suggest for this recipe at least three as you can see already it's it's a mess it's very sandy it's very dirty you do have to clean it really well so let's move these out of the way i'm going to cut off the bottoms it's almost like a big scallion that's what it looks like to me Move that to the side. I'm gonna cut this in half like this, and I'm just gonna slit it down the middle like that, and I'm gonna place it in my colander, and we're gonna wash this really well. And then we're gonna clean this board because there's so much sand on it, I feel like I'm at the beach. So now that we have everything cleaned up from all that sand, we're going to chop our leeks. We're going to chop the white parts and the light green parts of the stem. So that looks like, let's grab it. So this part, okay. And up until the light green part of the stem. So about right here. So you see where it starts to get dark. We're going to leave that alone and leave that. We're going to take this. This you can use to make vegetable stock or vegetable broth, so I like to save that and keep that on the side. So we're just going to put that over there and we're going to go ahead and we're going to chop this into small little rings just like this. So let me go ahead and chop all of the leeks, the onions, and peel these potatoes and get them cubed so we could get it all in the pot and get going with this soup. The most gorgeous color yellow potato, absolutely beautiful. So now that we're just about done with chopping these onion and I'm bawling my eyes out from these onions, we're gonna get ready to move over to the stove, whew. all right now that you guys have met me on the other side this is what we got going on here i have a nice heavy dutch oven pot again i repeat this every time that i make these videos when it comes to soup you want to cook it in something heavy this is an enamel pot all right we get this nice and heated in this big old pot we're gonna add some oil and i'm still sniffling from these onions Remember the leeks are like onions and then the onions so everything is draining right now so be mindful. Bear with me. In this pot we're going to add onions. Now we're going to add in our leeks. Let me grab a spoon. Simple enough so far. We're just going to stir it just so the oil coats all of what we have in this pot and we're going to allow the leeks and the onions to cook for about eight to ten minutes. All right guys, come on in, take a look. So I gave it maybe about seven minutes because my leeks and onions are starting to brown and you do not want to brown the leeks and the onions because it starts to get bitter. You want to leave it where it's just soft and still sweet. So when you taste it, the leeks still taste pretty sweet. Now we're going to add in some of the rest of our ingredients. We're going to add in some thyme, just a couple of sprigs of thyme fresh thyme please try to use fresh not dried it just gives it a better richer flavor and we're going to add in our potatoes add in all of our potatoes these are so pretty so now that we got our potatoes in we're going to add some vegetable broth about four cups of vegetable broth let's pour away Now that we have our vegetable broth in there, give it a nice little stir. Come in, people want to see. They want to see what's going on in this pot. This is what it looks like. So we'll give this a nice stir. We're going to cover and allow this to cook for about 20 minutes. We're trying to get these potatoes nice and soft. So while the potatoes and the leeks cook, I know you've noticed there's no protein in this soup, so we're going to add a little bit of protein with some soy textured protein, or sometimes it's called, I have it on the side here, TVP, which is textured vegetable protein. All this is is dehydrated soybeans. That's it. Coming closer, I could show you what it looks like. It looks like just dried pieces of paper. This is an amazing and amazing amazing product. All you have to do is hydrate it. It gives you just as much protein as meat. You can use it for a multitude of recipes. I use it a lot of times almost as ground beef like in tacos. You could use it as a meat substitute in almost just about anything. I use it a lot in stir fry. Today we're going to use it just to top the soup and it's going to give the soup a little bit of a bacony flavor. So potato soup, usually traditional, they have like, you know, crispy bacon on top. We're going to have some crispy, crispy. Soy-textured protein, and I'm gonna show you what to do to get it to have that nice bacony, crispy flavor. So I'm just gonna take just a couple, not too much, just enough for my soup. Use as much as you'd like. This does expand, so even though it looks like that's not that much, once you add water, it is gonna grow and expand. So I'm just gonna add a little water to this. It hydrates really quickly, maybe in about three to five minutes. So now I gave our textured vegetable protein about five minutes to get nice and hydrated. And let me show you, they're nice and soft, almost bouncy, and they're fully hydrated. So all I'm going to do now is strain them off. And since I have the strainer here, I'm just going to pour it in. And then I usually just squeeze it out, try to squeeze out as much of the water as possible. Put them back in my cup. And then we're going to head over to the stove so I can show you how to get them nice and crispy. So over here, I just have a skillet heating up. I'm going to add some oil to it. This is just some grapeseed oil. Once this pot gets nice and hot, I'm going to add in my TVP, my textured vegetable protein. Now I'm just going to go ahead and add my TVP, all of it. I usually just shake it around just a little bit so it gets all coated with the oil. And then I'm just going to leave it and let it fry up until it gets brown. All right. I think it's ready. It's nice and brown. It has absorbed up most of the oil, which is doing exactly what it needs to do. I'm going to give it a nice little toss. See how nice and dry it is in this pan? This is exactly how you want it. Now, what I normally add is some liquid aminos. This is going to give it a salty, almost bacon-y taste, almost like you had a cured meat, like bacon. I'm just going to drizzle enough. so i know it's getting salted toss it in the pan this doesn't have much cooking to do we're just trying to get it absorbed into the pan and let it brown again for probably another minute and it's done pretty much that is it these are your bacon bits that you're gonna put on top of the soup let me taste it delicious it's crispy but still a little tender on the inside like meat so good This is good. This is so good. And that's it. That's done. We could turn this off. So we allowed the potatoes, the leeks, the onions to cook for about 20 minutes. This is what it looks like. Come in and take a look. Let me place this over here on the side. Everything is cooked up. Let's check on these potatoes. Yep. Everything looks good. Everything looks good. Let's see how soft these potatoes are. The potatoes are cooked. Yes, they are cooked. All right. So now what we're going to do is add all of our other ingredients and we're going to make the soup creamy. So of course, you know, we're going to pull out the immersion blender because that's what is going to really make it creamy or another option. You can put it in the blender like a countertop blender and do that also. But this just makes it way more convenient. So now what we're going to do is add in The garlic that I roasted, so just squeeze those pieces into the soup. Look at that, freshly roasted, beautiful, full of flavor garlic. Now, you know I'm going to add in some miso. You don't have to do this step, but this gives it a really delicious grounded base umami flavor. I think it's so important in creamy soups like this. Got to say this, don't worry guys, I'll have all of the ingredients listed in the description box. So just watch the process right now so you can know exactly what to do. I'm just giving that a stir just so my miso can get right into that soup. It already looks creamy, already looks creamy. We're going to add in some coconut milk. So instead of cream, that's what we're substituting for our cream because this is plant-based. Oh, that got all over me. Give me a second. Let me clean up. I needed a minute to clean myself up, but here's our coconut milk and we're just going to pour it right in. That's going to give it the creaminess. All right. Give it another stir to make sure everything is well incorporated. We're going to add some black pepper and fresh black pepper. We're going to add some salt. But make sure you taste to make sure it's to the amount of salt that you would like in your soup. We're going to give that a nice stir and I'm going to give it a taste. That looks good already. Let me give it a little taste. Could use a little bit more salt. Okay guys, so now that I gave it a nice stir, let's turn this down just a little bit and let's grab our immersion blender and we're going to get this creamy. Come on in so you can see how creamy it got. So this is how creamy I want my soup to be. You can make it even creamier than this. This looks golden and delicious. So now because I want to add even more color and flavor I just chopped some chives and we're just going to add that in now. You never want to put chives in the beginning of the cooking process because it will just cook all the flavor out. So we added it right now and that's just going to give it just a little bit of greenery just you know for visual appeal. This looks good plus it is going to give it a little bit more oniony flavor. And there guys I think we're ready. All right, guys, it's time to taste this bad boy. Look how beautiful this soup is. It's super creamy. I can't wait. Here we go. Let's scoop it in. Oh, this would make a nice pre-meal soup. All right, so we got our soup in here. And don't forget, we have those bacon crumbles. My plant-based bacon crumbles. We're going to add a little bit to the top. I love these. I just snack on these. They're so good. A couple of pieces of chives because you know I gotta add a little bit of greenery. So just a little bit of greenery right on top just so it can look pretty and there we go. That is our potato roasted garlic potato leek soup with bacon bits. That's it. All right let's taste it. Let's scoop in there and grab some of the soup. It smells good too. A little hot but absolutely delicious. This is so comforting, it's so warm, Mmm, really, really good, really good, delicious. I hope you guys try this soup. Guys, thank you so much for joining me in my vegan kitchen. Don't forget to subscribe, tap on that bell, and I'll see you next week for another easy, delicious, plant-based meal. Bye, guys. 嗯