White Bean Soup with Kale & Sausage

This is the soup with kale on top--see below for options!

A white bean soup with kale and sausage is pretty normal, right? I think it's a standard Portuguese or Spanish recipe. What's funny about this particular soup is that I found the recipe during my regular weekend menu planning, wrote down what I'd need to make it (4 CANS OF BEANS!), and then totally forgot where I'd seen the recipe in the first place. When soup day rolled around, I was at a loss.

So I made it up. All I knew was it involved 4 CANS OF BEANS, sausage, 2 carrots, and a box of chicken broth. I also remembered that I'd written a note on the recipe to add kale if available. Here's what I came up with. It was yummy!

Ingredients:

• 1 t butter
• 1 t extra virgin olive oil
• small yellow onion, chopped
• 2 large carrots, chopped
• 3 sweet Italian sausages (I used turkey ones), squeezed out of casings
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 box (32 oz) chicken broth
• 4 cans (15 oz each) cannelini beans (I used Goya)
• salt to taste
• bunch kale, chopped (I used Lacinato kale)

Assembly:

• Sauté onions in the butter and olive oil until fragrant. I suggest using a Dutch oven. Then add carrots. Stir until they're looking a bit cooked.
• Add the squeezed-out-of-casings sausage and stir/poke as it cooks. The goal is not to have huge pieces in there.
• Add the garlic and briefly stir until aromatic but not burned, then add chicken broth.
• Add 3 cans of beans. With the fourth can, empty it into a smaller bowl and use a potato masher or similar implement to squash the beans into a creamy mess. Then add to soup.
• Stir and simmer, add salt to taste. The sausage should be pretty much cooked by now, so your goal is to get the carrots to whatever tender-soft consistency you desire.
• For the last step you have a choice. Either steam the kale separately and add on top of the soup after serving (see photo above). This is recommended if you have fussy children. OR, if nobody will mind, add the chopped kale directly to the soup and simmer a bit more until everything is gorgeously intermixed.

Serve! This soup is super tasty on a fall evening, especially with buttered toast or your favorite comfort carb.

Do you have a white bean & kale soup recipe too? Do you remember where it is?!