How to Clean 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 flavor and can either be cooked longer to tenderize them, or used when making homemade soup stock. 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 color and more tender. What produces a beautiful leek, a long pale body, also results in sand and dirt been lodged deep inside the leek. 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...."