Potato & Leek (Baxters)

Three Kings at Christmas

This review was suggested by @AshleyHeinson on Twitter, who very much enjoys leek and potato soup. I have to agree with them, and this ingredient combo is usually in my weekly rotation. As a special Christmas treat, I’m going to review three potato and leek soups back to back and crown this year’s winner. Of course, other potato and leek soups are available for purchase and may be better than these. I guess we’ll never know. Or maybe I’ll do them next year.

Sweetness

The reason that a leek-containing soup holds an element of danger, is the ever-present risk of over-sweetness. The leek is naturally quite sweet and usually needs something else to balance it out, otherwise the results can be too cloying. Unfortunately, the fine folks at Baxters have practically made a dessert here. I felt the need to brush my teeth at the halfway point and it’s so sweet that it almost tastes artificially so.

Potato-ness

There is some good potato work here. The texture is ideal and there are plenty to go around, but they’re just overpowered. Potatoes are the most suggestible vegetable around, seemingly impregnated with whatever flavour gently brushes against them in the queue at the post office. Here, they tragically have a rubbish bedfellow – these leeks snore, hog the duvet and have feet like icicles.

Wet-ness

Some soups thrive in liquid form (see Tomato, Oxtail), but others wither and seem frail when they’re too soggy. This is one of those. I’ll just come out and say it – these ingredients feel like bystanders in their own soup. It’s not cohesive or complete and therefore it just feels sad.

Conclusion

If this was some kind of truly evil experiment in leek-flavoured lumpy hot chocolate, it would be a great success. However, as I am not the kind of mad scientist who would ever create this, I was disappointed.