hi i'm shelly young owner of the chopping block and today i'm going to teach you how to clean leaks and wild leaks or ramps i certainly have to mention that being a chicago-based business we're named after this particular onion or wild leek also called a ramp they grow wild and prolific in the area so both of these tend to be quite dirty and people struggle with how to clean them so i want to show you how to do that today so leeks you're going to find these in most grocery stores these days there's a white part in green part generally we do not eat the green part and sometimes you'll see little hairs if you will on the end of this per the root of the leek those i would cut off and discard not much there today but i'm still going to cut that off and i'm going to just cut this off if you're making stock roasting a chicken something like that we can put that leak right in there so i'm going to show you two ways to clean the leek the first one is very simple if i want to dice or slice a leak i will simply go through and do that keep in mind these can be very dirty so as you're doing this you may see a lot of dirt fall onto your cutting board don't worry about that but make sure you clean your cutting board off before you cut something else so i'm going to take these i'm going to put them into a bowl just like this and we're going to cover them in water we're going to let that sit the dirt will fall to the bottom the clean leaks will rise to the top so if i want to leave my leak in a larger piece perhaps i want to braise the leek or roast it or something like that what i'll do then is i leave it in half like i just cut it in half like this and i'll take this to the sink and try to keep it together and just run cold water and clean in between these all these pieces so you can see the ramps look very similar to a leak now that you see them and this root in here very dirty we want to just cut that off and really what you need to do then is just check the leaves because we we're going to eat the leaves in this case unlike the other leek the domestically we're going to wild leeks we can eat the leaves so i just want to make sure that the leaves look look really good and even this one i can use that all of these really the leaves oh here's one in this case it happens frequently that the leaves are discolored or brown i'm going to take that off this one doesn't look so hot either if you can use a portion of it use it now we're going to take the leaks depending on or the wild leeks or the ramps depending on what you want to do with these if i'm making a risotto this would be wonderful in a risotto just chop them up in you know an inch or two pieces you can also saute them whole if you like the look of that it's really beautiful and people frequently saute them whole as well but as i'm whether i'm leaving them whole or i'm chopping them i'm going to then submerge them in cold water just like our other leeks we let the dirt fall to the bottom and the wild leeks will float to the top so my leeks these ones are pretty clean so didn't take very long at all to soak them but what i want to just do is be careful leave the dirt at the bottom pull my dice leaks off of the top just like so our ramps have been soaking i'm just going to pull them out again be careful to leave the dirt at the bottom you don't want to stir that up and that is how you clean wild leeks and leeks