So, what do you do when you're stuck indoors during a blizzard? Well if you're like most of us, you post pictures on Facebook of the snow piling up outside your house, digging your car out of the snow, your dogs playing in the snow, and the food you've been cooking all day. I myself am guilty of the first two Facebook postings, I enjoyed all my friends' pictures of their dogs (my cat Lulu just watched the snow from the window), but I saved my food pictures for this blog posting. *smile*
One of the benefits of my recent experiment with chicken stock is that I now have a freezer full of it. And Saturday was the perfect day for soup. Back before culinary school, when I was just starting to teach myself to cook things beyond my mom's cookies, I used to try and replicate recipes that I saw on television cooking shows or that I had tasted in restaurants. Living in the suburbs of Houston, many/most of the restaurants were large chains. This soup was inspired by a soup I ate regularly in one of those chain restaurants. (I'll leave it to you to guess which one.) I've since come to know that the dish is actually a fairly traditional soup from Italy, so I feel a bit better....
Sausage, Potato, and Kale Soup
The version of the recipe I'm presenting below is the original, but you can really have fun by using different types of sausage, potatoes, and greens. One of my favorite variations is to use Spanish chorizo and sweet potatoes.
Serves 6 to 8
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 to 1 ¼ pounds Italian sausage (I used sweet, but spicy is good, too)
2 medium onions, diced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
8 cups chicken stock***, low or no sodium
1 bunch kale or 5 ounces baby kale
2 pounds red potatoes, sliced thinly on a mandolin
2 cups cream or half and half
Kosher salt and black pepper to taste
In a large soup pot or cast iron Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Remove the sausage from the casings and add to the pot, stirring and breaking up the sausage as it browns. When there is no longer any visible pink in the sausage, add the onions and cook, stirring until they have softened and started to turn translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and continue to cook, stirring, until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute more. Season with salt and pepper, add the chicken stock and bring the soup to a high simmer.
While waiting for the soup to come to a simmer, prepare the kale by tearing the leaves away from the center vein/rib. Discard the vein/rib, and tear the kale leaves into bit sized pieces. If you are using the baby kale instead, there is no need to remove the center veins/ribs or to break down the leaves any more, they can go straight into the soup.
When the soup comes to a high simmer, add the kale and potatoes. Return to a simmer, cover the pot, and let the soup cook until the potatoes and kale are tender, about 15 minutes. Stir in the cream or half and half and season to taste with more salt and pepper. Serve.
***One last note--the stock that I used in this recipe was half chicken wing stock and half chicken feet stock. If you read my blog posting on stocks, you know that the stock made from wings had the best flavor, but the stock made from the feet had the most gelatin. The texture of the finished soup was incredible. The soup had a velvety, buttery mouthfeel, you could really tell the difference the chicken feet were making. There was so much gelatin in the soup that when I took the leftovers out of the refrigerator, it had firmed up to the consistency of soft jello. (I think this is so cool...forgive the moment of food geekery!)
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