How to Clean Leeks, it's easy! Here are instructions on how to clean leeks 2 ways — chopped for soup and for whole leeks.
Consider the leek.
It's majestic, a titan in the onion family.
Mostly just the white and light green parts are eaten, though the darker green parts have plenty of flavour and can either be cooked longer to tenderize them, or used when making home-made soup stock.
Leeks Are Dirty
The challenge when cooking with leeks is that they are almost always dirty. When leeks are grown, soil is piled up around them, so that more of the leek is hidden from the sun, and therefore lighter in colour and more tender.
What produces a beautiful leek, a long pale body, also results in sand and dirt being lodged deep inside the leek.
Two Ways to Clean Leeks
There are basically two ways to clean leeks, the method you use depends upon how you are going to use the leeks in cooking. The easiest way is to prepare them chopped for use in soup.
A little more challenging is preparing a leek for use in a recipe that requires whole leeks. Both methods are detailed here.
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