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What would you substitute for leeks, which are rather pricey now, in soups?

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

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This event was on February 28, 2023

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Ann Snider

What would you substitute for leeks, which are rather pricey now, in soups?

Answer

I would totally go for an onion as well. You know leaks are great. They definitely have a certain kind of flavor profile but onions are gonna be your closest to it. You can go with green onions, but you're not gonna get quite there, but you can you know, the green part of the onion use that as well too. So probably, you know a little bit of just like a standard yellow onion mixed in with a couple green onions then you know sliced and as well to be able to make that happen to get some of that same flavor profile, but quite honestly you can just get away with the onions as well. Just make sure if you're doing it in a soup to do a saute on them before you put them in with all the other ingredients so you get a nice you get some of that nice flavor in there and what typically if I'm doing a soup and it has onions leaks in it. Those are the first things in the pot and I'm actually sauteing those to get a little bit of those natural sugars to really soft and then all you know, rinse the bottom of the pot a little bit of water to bring all the brown Bottom of pan back in and then you start adding your other ingredients for your soup into it. So that should work for you.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.