Spicy Sausage Soup

When I made my last soup, I realized that soup is an outstanding way to make an easy, delicious, healthy meal. I had some stuff laying around this week and decided to see what kind of soup I could make from it. It's simultaneously pseudo-Italian and a little bit Hispanic. Importantly, it's all around delicious. It's nice and hearty. It would be a great thing to come inside to after a cool, crisp fall day. It even has all those lovely fall colors.

Liquid autumn.

Ingredients:

  - 1 lb hot Italian sauasge, chopped into 3/4" slices

  - 1 1/2 onion, chopped

  - 2 carrots, peeled and chopped

  - 3 cloves garlic, sliced or minced

  - 1 tbsp olive oil (optional - depends on your meat)

  - 6 cups water

  - 1 tbsp beef bullion

  - 1 14 oz can black beans, rinsed

  - 1 14 oz can of stewed tomatoes, drained and chopped

  - 1 tbsp marjoram

  - 1 tsp oregano

  - 1 tsp ground cayenne pepper

  - 2 cups farfalle or another short pasta/noodle

Instructions:

1. Brown the sausage in the bottom of a stock pot capable of handling at least 5 quarts.
2. Add the onion, carrot, and garlic. If the sausage you're cooking with is lean, you'll want to add olive oil at this point. Saute, stirring occasionally, until the onion softens.
3. Add the water, bullion, beans, tomatoes, and spices. Bring the liquid to a boil.
4. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes.
5. Add the pasta, and cook for about fifteen minutes or until done.

You end up with about 5 quarts of a really tasty soup with an awesome kick to it. It's pretty thick - it kind of blurs the line between soup and stew. It's filling and super satisfying. There are quite a few ingredients that this has in common with the Tomato Asparagus soup I linked to at the top of this post. Onion and carrot just make good soup. Marjoram and oregano are just the best spices I have on hand that I thought would go with this - the marjoram especially I felt would complement the sausage. (Speaking of the sausage, if you'd like the pieces to look a bit "cleaner" feel free to roast them beforehand. Saute the veggies, then add the cooked and cut sausage along with the liquid.)

You could easily do chicken instead of sausage if you'd like to cut back on the fat. If you do that, you may want to add some fennel. Stewed tomatoes aren't a necessity. You could do fresh, or any type of canned. It'll turn out just fine. I had fresh tomatoes in my fridge, and frankly I'm not sure why I didn't use them. If you're going the fresh tomato route, I'd recommend Roma/plum. Shoot for having about two cups worth, and try not to include the seeds. Regarding spices, fresh or died basil would go great in this. So would a bay leaf (note to self: buy bay leaves). A bit of cumin could play nicely with the spiciness and the black beans - I wouldn't do more than a teaspoon or so, though. It would be an interesting variant. If you'd like to make it a bit more stew-ish, potato or yucca would be perfectly at home. It'd probably take about a 40 minute boil for those to be fully cooked.

Other than sausage fat, this is a pretty healthy dish. The only thing that doesn't really have a positive contribution towards nutrition is the pasta, and there really isn't a ton here. Tomatoes and carrots are fantastic vegetables for you, and by cooking them in the soup you ensure that their wonderful nutrients have nowhere to hide. Black beans are a good source of protein. You could make this a decent vegetarian soup if you took out the sausage and added another can or so of beans, using vegetable stock instead of beef.

Final Vedict:

Taste: 4/5

Ease: 4.5/5

Health: 4/5

Edit: How could I forget? This would probably be phenomenal with Chorizo. I'd consider holding back on the marjoram, though.