A Leek (Allium ampeloprasum volt-ampere. porrum (L.) J. Homophile) occurs as vegetable belonging, with onion and garlic, to the Alliaceae, the onion family. Too therein mintage come ii super different vegetables: A elephant garlic (Allium ampeloprasum var. ampeloprasum) grown for its bulbs, & kurrat which is grown for its leaves in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. A leek is besides for instance classified when Allium porrum (L.)

Like than forming a pinching bulb like a onion, the leek produces an extended cylinder of bundled leaf sheaths which are then typically blanched by pushing soil in the area of the two (trenching). It is typically sold when little seedlings inside flats which are then began early inside greenhouses, to be placed retired when upwind permits. It used to exist equally that constituted in a garden, leeks come healthy; several varieties may be left in the ground in the period of the wintertime to be harvested as required.

Leek cultivars may be subdivided around many ways, however a chiefest is "summer leeks", intended for harvest in the season after planted, & overwintering leeks, meant to exist as harvested in the spring of the year charted planting. Summer leek types come usually little than overwintering types; overwintering types come typically other strongly flavored.

Cuisine
Leeks come usually considered to have a ticket flavor than a most common onion. It is an essential ingredient of cock-a-leekie soup and of vichyssoise. It can too become utilized altogether around salads, doing especially swell once it is a prime ingredient.

Because of their symbolism within Wales (see in the image below) it use came to become utilized extensively therein united states's culinary art.

History
Leeks were prized per Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who distributed a vegetable through Europe.

A leek is one of a national emblems of Wales, whose citizens wear it on St. David's Day. Based on data from legend, Saint David ordered his Welsh soldiers to identify themselves by wearing a vegetable inside their helmets in an ancient battle against the Saxons that took place in the leek field. This story will own been processed higher per English poet Michael Drayton but it is known that the leek has been a symbol of Wales for an extended period; Shakespeare for example refers to the custom of wearing a leek as an "ancient tradition" within Henry V. In the play, Henry tells Fluellen he is wearing a leek "for I am Welsh, you know, good countryman".