My Mom's Sausage Soup

With the cold weather approaching, it might be a good time to gather some soup recipes. There's nothing like a good pot of soup on a cold snowy day.
Hey, I could eat soup in the middle of summer! Anyway this soup is a recipe that my Mom found in the local newspaper. She tweaked it a little bit....I think it's enough to call it her own.
If you have some extra tomatoes and spinach from your gardens, this is a good recipe to make.

Hearty Sausage Soup

1 lb of breakfast sausage(maple, or brown sugar)
2/3 cup of uncooked rice
6 cups of beef broth
1 15oz can of beans(rinsed and drained)
1 15 oz can of diced tomatoes
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 10oz box of frozen spinach(thawed, and thoroughly drained)

Remove sausage from casing and add to soup pot. On medium heat, cook till lightly browned. Add rice, beef broth, beans, tomatoes, and pepper. Bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for 12-15 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in chopped spinach and let simmer for a few minutes.
Serve with some good crusty buttered bread.

Recipe Notes:

Instead of the breakfast sausage, you can use your favorite such as hot or sweet italian. And if you have a 12oz package of sausage, you can certainly use that. The missing 4 oz isn't really that big of a deal. As far as beans go, you can use your favorite bean. Navy, pinto, black beans are some.

Let me know if anybody tries it and if they like it or not.

sounds like Excellent cold weather grub Too Tall
Your mother sounds like my kind of cook, I love to take a recipe, turn it upside down and make it work
I will make this, substituting jasmine rice for the rice, prepared homegrown dry beans, and our own frozen spinach...may also change the sausage, thinking maybe kielbasa??

hey pharmerphil,

Whenever I cook a recipe for the first time, I always follow it exactly, then I'll experiment the next time I make it. My Mom does the experimenting right off the bat. Sometimes we have small arguments about that....LOL.

I never used kielbasa in this soup recipe but I've used kielbasa in a recipe very similar to this.....it had everything but the tomatoes and beans. It turned out pretty good I thought.

I almost forgot.....serve this soup with some crusty bread slathered with butter.

Let me know how it turns out.

Too Tall Tomatoes wrote:hey pharmerphil,

Whenever I cook a recipe for the first time, I always follow it exactly, then I'll experiment the next time I make it. My Mom does the experimenting right off the bat. Sometimes we have small arguments about that....LOL.

I never used kielbasa in this soup recipe but I've used kielbasa in a recipe very similar to this.....it had everything but the tomatoes and beans. It turned out pretty good I thought.

I almost forgot.....serve this soup with some crusty bread slathered with butter.

Let me know how it turns out.

Too Tall, taking liberties with a recipe is something that comes with Lots of experience, and age, I; and I am sure your Mother, have been re-working recipes, substituting, improving...most our lives...sometimes for flavor, sometimes for necessity, but usually just for fun...and experimentation
Learn as You go, WRITE DOWN..your success...
because..
You'll remember your failures...
but not your success..(funny how that works out):scratch:

Oh, and Crusty bread...well, not for this dish...but there are 2 loaves in the oven as I type...

My Mom is 81 and has been married for 52 years(Dad passed away 8 years ago) and with 7 kids she did a LOT of cooking.

My Mom has cooked alot of great things over the years but she always seems to have a knack for making soup.

Just a quick note to say, Swiss Chard would work perfectly in this as a sub for the spinach. Just a suggestion for your SFG planning, chard grows when spinach does not. I am in love with this veg and never have eaten it before.

Oh, I really appreciate the recipe also. I accidentally bought some maple sausage and have to use it up, so this looks like a good way to do that, thanks!

You're welcome stripesmom.

Either maple or brown sugar sausage is definitely my favorite for this soup. Talking about swiss chard makes me think that collard greens would be another great substitute for the spinach.

Oh now I'm hungry for collard greens with ham hocks!