Italian sausage soup

Italian sausage soup

This is my interpretation of a recipe from alt.support.diet.low-carb. It is a double-batch, so I freeze half for another time.

I think this stuff is utterly awesome; it's my favorite soup.

ingredients

3 lb mild Italian sausage, sliced
1 onion, diced
2 yellow bell peppers, sliced
2 red bell peppers, sliced
4 cloves garlic, pressed
1/4 cup olive oil
3 pints broth (either chicken, beef or a mixture works)
1 pint canned tomatoes (or 14.5 oz can from store)
1/2 lb yellow summer squash, sliced
1/2 lb zucchini, sliced
1/2 lb broccoli, diced
1/2 lb cauliflower, diced
1/2 lb Swiss chard, torn
1/4 cup dehydrated tomatoes, blended to powder (or 1 TB tomato paste)
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil

method

Fry sausage, onion, peppers and garlic in olive oil in large stock pot over medium heat until sausage is cooked through and onion begins to caramelize.

Add broth, canned tomatoes, summer squash, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, Swiss chard, dehydrated tomatoes, oregano and basil. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 4 hours or more.

Serve with parmesan.

Sounds horrifically low carb but a real heart attack food with 3 pounds of sausage in it .
Still you have to die of something

Are you meaning a mild salami or is the sausage another type such as palony or something else ?

Errr... it's contains 6 lbs of veggies. The 3 lb sausage makes a GIANT pot. Like... you make it in a stockpot cause a dutch oven is too small. I typically freeze half and eat the other half for a week. But there's no good way to cut it down as you'd lose the variety of veggies.

The long, slow cook is to make all the veggies wind up flavored of sausage.

The type of sausage is... it's a raw sausage, not cured. It's usually in a casing, but sometimes sold loose bulk. It comes in "sweet" which contains pork meat and fennel, and "hot" which also has crushed red peppers in it. It's the kind they put on pizza.

As far as health goes, if you want it healthy, you must buy pastured pork... preferably a heritage breed. The stuff in the stores typically has no fat, no vitamins A & D, no CLA, etc.

Though honestly, the recipe is yummy either way, even with crappy store-bought sausage.

Just realized you're in the UK, and maybe they don't put the same thing on pizza there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_sausage

Plantoid, I'm English living in Canada and can translate the various foods for you...lol

Italian sausage has Fennel in it, it's the aniseed flavoured sausages.. I know you can get it over there but probably under a different name.. Here there's hot Italian that is a peppery aniseed flavour and there's mild which is just aniseed..

Aran

jpatti wrote:Italian sausage soup......1/4 cup dehydrated tomatoes, blended to powder (or 1 TB tomato paste)

Why dehydrated tomatoes? Is it to thicken the soup? If you were going to use fresh tomatoes, what portions would you use for both the pint and the paste/dehydrated?

Sounds like a keeper recipe. We often add sausage to soups and stews, to say nothing of pizza. In the summer, our local Amish make pizza sausage. Don't know if it comes from grass fed pork though. Probably not.

tom

Pork shouldn't be grass-fed per se; pigs are omnivores, not herbivores. It should be pastured though... where they get to live in sunshine and root around in herbs and whatnot. Happy pigs make healthy meat.

The original recipe called for tomato paste, which is generally used to "deepen" the flavor of broth and add a complexity you don't get from fresh tomatoes.

However, I have always found recipes calling for a TB of tomato paste annoying, as you save the rest of the jar in the fridge until it goes bad and throw it out. I use dried tomatoes cause it works similarly and I have a huge jar of them from my garden.

If you have neither dried tomatoes or tomato paste on hand, I suspect the soup would be nearly as good if you just skipped that bit.

To replace the pint of canned tomatoes, I'd peel, seed and dice about 3 cups tomatoes and throw them in - the long cooking time will make it pretty close to the same.

Here's my Dad's recipe for authentic Italian sausage. Both Dad's parents immigrated from Sicily c. 1906 and lived in Bogalusa, LA before migrating to Chicago.

Dad’s Italian Sausage

1 pork shoulder

• Pork shoulders are about 1/3 fat and 2/3 lean, and can be between
3# and 5#.
• They may also be call “picnic roast”.
• Have the butcher coarse grind for sausage, not fine grind like ground
beef.
• You might want to make 1# to start to be sure seasonings are OK for
you, and then adjust for the remaining ground pork.

Coarse grind pork shoulder	1#	3#	5#
Salt	1/4 tsp	3 tsp	5 tsp
Coarse grind black pepper	1/4 tsp	3/4 tsp	1-1/4 tsp
Crushed red pepper flakes	1/4 tsp	3/4 tsp	1-1/4 tsp
Coarse ground or whole fennel seed	1/2 tsp	1-1/2 tsp	2 tsp

• Mix seasonings into ground pork thoroughly.
• Let stand in refrigerator overnight.
• The next day, form into patties (round or oblong, depending on what
you like) or stuff the mixture in casings if you can find them and twist
them off about every 6" or so.

For sandwiches

• Sauté the patties in a covered pan with a wee bit of olive oil (once around the pan) and about 1 tbsp of water (keeps spattering to a minimum)
• Remove patties and keep warm.
• Add 1 large bunch of fresh spinach to the frying pan and sauté until spinach wilts and all the scrumptious brown bits have been taken up into the pan juices.
• Best with crusty Kaiser rolls, ciabatta, or bolillos.

Enjoy!

Luci you're makin me drool here

Luci, Thank you so much, I have been looking for recipes for various sausages.

Really looking forward to trying this.



jpatti, the soup sounds delicous.

nKedrOoStEr wrote:Luci you're makin me drool here

Don't do that, rooster, or you'll short out your keyboard

I knew i shouldnt read this thread I am hungry now

lol