Sausage and Kale Soup
Sausage, beans, and greens in one pot. Thirty minutes from parking to bowl.
- calories
- 390
- weight
- 11 oz
- cal / oz
- 35
- protein
- 22 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 35 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Dutch oven
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Bulk sausage or links, casings removed | 20 oz | hot Italian pork or turkey, your call on heat |
|---|---|---|
| Onion, diced | 1 medium | |
| Kale, stemmed and roughly chopped | 8 cups | strip the leaves off the ribs and throw the ribs out |
| Garlic, minced | 2 cloves | |
| Dry white wine | 1/2 cup | |
| Chicken stock | 3 1/4 cups | boxed, or bouillon and water |
| Cannellini or white kidney beans | 1 can (15 oz) | drained and rinsed |
| Diced tomatoes | 1 can (15 oz) | juice and all |
| Sun-dried tomatoes, chopped | 1/2 cup | |
| Black pepper | 1/4 tsp |
Method
- Do the knife work first. Dice the onion, chop the kale, mince the garlic, drain the beans. Once the pot is hot this moves fast.
- Set a 6-quart Dutch oven over a grate on the fire or on a liquid-fuel burner at medium. Cook the sausage and onion together, breaking up the meat, until no pink is left. Scoop it into a bowl.
- Drop the kale into the pot with the sausage fat. Stir constantly for 2 minutes, until it collapses.
- Add the garlic, 1 minute. Add the wine and let it cook down 2 minutes.
- Return the sausage and onion. Add stock, beans, both kinds of tomato, and the pepper. Bring it to a boil.
- Pull the pot to lower heat or a cooler edge of the coals. Cover and simmer 15 to 20 minutes, until the kale gives up.
- Taste for salt. Sausage and stock vary enough that you cannot guess.
This is a car-camping soup, not a pack soup. Fresh kale and raw sausage need a cooler, and eight cups of stock is weight nobody carries. What it buys you is a full dinner for eight out of one pot in about half an hour, which is the right trade on a Friday night when the tents are barely up.
The sun-dried tomatoes matter more than they look. Canned tomatoes bring acid and liquid but not much depth; the dried ones bring concentrated sugar and salt that stand up to the sausage fat. Beans do the thickening, so the broth ends up with body without any flour or dairy in it.
Packing
Sausage rides in the cooler. Everything else is pantry and can live in the food bin. Chop the onion and kale at home into a zip bag if you want to skip the cutting board in camp.
Variations
- Skip the wine and use another half cup of stock. The soup loses some edge but nothing structural.
- Swap the kale for collards and add five minutes of simmer.
- Vegetarian version: no sausage, vegetable stock, a second can of beans, and a big pinch of fennel seed and red pepper flakes to fake the sausage seasoning.
https://chuckwagoneer.wordpress.com/2017/09/20/sausage-and-kale-soup