Kale, Potato, Veggie Sausage Soup

Today a friend provided me with an abundance of turnips, rutabaga and kale so with the temperatures outside starting to cool down a bit I thought a hot soup would be in order. Kale is one of those food ingredients which go well with an assortment of meals especially those which originate around the Mediterranean or in Northern Europe. It is also an excellent product to eat with fish. With my newly acquired kale, I decided to cook up a pot of this delightful kale soup with added Potatoes, other veggies and Spanish sausage. The following recipe will take a little over one hour to make and will feed four people.

Ingredients

1 pound of Spanish Chorizo sliced into thin 1/8 inch slices
1 Tsp of Virgin Olive Oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper
1 red sweet pepper
2 Tbsp of minced garlic
3 large potatoes, peeled and sliced into ¼ inch cubes
6 cups of sliced fresh kale
6 cups of water
3 chicken bullion
1 stalk of diced celery
A generous sprinkle of "Jane's" Crazy Salt
Two pinches of Parsley Flakes
Ground pepper to taste
3 plum tomatoes diced up

Preparation of soup

Place the Olive Oil into a large pot and heat over a medium heat. Put the sliced Chorizo sausage into the pot and cook it until it appears cooked. This should take approximately two minutes. Next add the chopped onions, the peppers and continue cooking or another two minutes. Add the minced garlic and the cubes of potatoes, along with the water. Bring the mixture to a rapid boil and cooking for an additional 2 minutes. Add all of the remaining spices at this time. Finally, add the kale while stirring constantly for slightly over 2 minutes.

It is now time to stir in the bullion cubes and bring the mixture to a constant boil. Reduce the heat and cover while simmering for one hour. Season the soup with black pepper and "Jane's" Crazy Salt. Lastly, stir in the diced tomatoes and cook the soup uncovered for an additional 15 minutes. Place the soup in large bowls and serve hot.

Notice there was no salt was added to this recipe except for the "Jane's Crazy Salt. This spice provides not only salt but additional spices as well. Taste your soup after you have added the bullion cubes and the "Jane's Crazy Salt. If it still needs salt you can add some kosher salt as necessary. A really good change to this recipe would be to add some white beans to it however since I usual give extra food to my son, I left out the beans since he doesn't care for them. Finding a quality Chorizo here in America might prove difficult so you may have to locate a good Spanish grocery store.

This soup is very similar to a Portuguese soup known as "Caldo Verde". The major difference is that the Portuguese soup uses no tomato and has fewer vegetables in it. It can also be made with just about any type of spicy sausage. Additionally, in the Portuguese soup the potatoes are slightly mashed up with only traces of potato chunks for texture sort of like a potato soup. If you try this recipe I hope you enjoy it.

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