Sweet Potato Leek Soup
This sweet potato leek soup is a comforting and healthy take on a classic. It’s made with simple ingredients and is paleo, whole30, and AIP-friendly.
What is Potato Leek Soup?
Potato leek soup is a straight forward soup that’s creamy, comforting, and easy to make! It’s traditionally made with sauteed leeks, garlic, white potatoes, broth, and heavy cream, and is topped off with fresh herbs like chives.
To make it just a tad healthier and nightshade-free, I decided to recreate this soup with white sweet potatoes to make it a sweet potato leek soup! It’s a great side or appetizer and can easily be customized with toppings like bacon.
How to make Sweet Potato Leek Soup
- Prepare and cook the leeks: by slicing the white part of the leek info half-moons. Run under cold water to clean thoroughly. Using a large stockpot, heat the avocado oil over medium heat. Add the leeks and stir often for about 8-10 minutes or until fully softened, but not browned. Add the garlic and saute for another 1-2 minutes.
- Prepare the soup: Add sweet potatoes and stir to combine. Pour in the broth and season with salt. Mix well and top with bay leaves. Bring the soup to a medium-low simmer and allow to simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are fork-tender. Remove the bay leaves and reduce the heat. Pour in the coconut cream and stir. Allow the soup to cool slightly and use an immersion blender (or a full blender) to blend the soup until creamy.
The Ingredients You’ll Need for Sweet Potato Leek Soup
White sweet potato
I love using Hannah sweet potato for a sweet potato that looks like a white potato and is slightly less sweet than orange. Of course, you can still use orange sweet potato or even try something like parsnip to customize this soup further
Leeks
You’ll use about two large leeks for this recipe, and will only use the white lower half of the leeks. I like to save the leek greens to flavor homemade bone broth.
Chicken broth
You can use a broth of your choice, like veggie broth to make this a vegan dish, but I think chicken broth works best.
Coconut cream
Coconut cream is the swap for heavy cream to make this recipe rich and creamy. I have not tried to make this coconut free, but you can likely sub more broth to have a less creamy soup.
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PrintSweet Potato Leek Soup
Ingredients
- 2 cups leeks
- 2 tbsp avocado oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 6 cups white sweet potato, peeled and chopped
- 4 1/2 cup broth
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 cup coconut cream
- 1/2 tsp black pepper (omit for AIP)
- 2 tbsp fresh chives, chopped
Instructions
- Prepare the leeks by slicing the white part of the leek info half moons. Run under cold water to clean thoroughly.
- Using a large stock pot, heat the avocado oil over medium heat. Add the leeks and stir often for about 8-10 minutes or until fully softened, but not browned. Add the garlic and saute for another 1-2 minutes.
- Add the sweet potatoes and stir to combine. Pour in the broth and season with salt. Mix well and top with bay leaves.
- Bring the soup to a medium-low simmer and allow to simmer for 30 minutes or until the potatoes are fork tender. Remove the bay leaves and reduce the heat. Pour in the coconut cream and stir.
- Allow the soup to cool slightly and use an immersion blender (or a full blender) to blend the soup until creamy.
- Top with black pepper and chives and serve warm.
Could I add chicken to this? I’m looking to make this a one pan meal with an added protein!
Sure!!
I just made this and enjoyed it very much. I wish I would have had some bacon to try with it. However, for half of the amount of salt, I used smoked salt, and it gave it a nice flavor.
★★★★★
Thank you so much, Michele!! Sounds amazing!
This is soooo good. The leeks, sweet potatoes, and coconut cream bring a slight sweetness that I’m not used to in potato soup, but it really works!
The 6 cups of chopped sweet potatoes ended up being about 4 sweet potatoes. We used Let’s Do Organic coconut cream, as it didn’t have any preservatives and appears to be AIP compliant.
We added bacon for some textural variety, and it was really good. Love previous commenter’s idea of adding other proteins in and will have to try that in the future.
Sounds delicious!!
This was delightful! Will definitely make again!
★★★★★
Yay, so glad to hear that!
My favorite fall recipe! We finally have soup in our lives again. Thank you!
★★★★★
Hi! Thank you so much for this recipe! I made this today and was super impressed w the consistency and the disguised sweet potato taste. I usually dislike sweet potatoes! Do you know of anything that can be used as a substitute for coconut cream, that is also dairy free? Maybe cashew based or almond based Greek yogurt? I dislike coconut outside of dessert recipes. Would love to make this a staple in our home, with reduced sweetness.
Thank you again!!!
I have not tried to make this coconut free, but you can likely sub more broth to have a less creamy soup!
YUM! Love fall soups. I need to try this version of a classic.
Delicious! But I probably should’ve only used the white part of the leeks since mine turned green!
★★★★
Glad you enjoyed!!
I made this today following the recipe exactly with the exception that I used ham bone broth. It tasted amazing until I added the coconut cream. It became so coconut flavored that it was totally ruined for me. I wish I used almond milk.
To make it less coconut-y, you can try swapping some coconut milk for broth!
I just made this for the first time yesterday and it is amazing!!! Thank you!! White Sweet potatoes are always in my kitchen ready for the next meal
★★★★★