Sausage Bean and Kale Soup
I got an 8 quart oval Le Creuset and immediately became insufferable... making vat after vat of meals that last a whole week. So for the cozy blizzard weekend of 2026, I made this magnificent bastard of a soup for like 4 days straight. This recipe also includes the Beanz from scratch recipe as an ingredient.
Ingredients:
1 whole recipe of Beanz from Scratch
4 cups hot water
3 tsp chicken bouillon powder
2lbs Italian Sausage (mix it up - get 1lb sweet, 1lb cheese and garlic or something)
1 large sweet onion
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
A generous fart of ketchup
3 tbsp sugar
1 generous tbsp olive oil
A splash of sake, whatever
1 giant wad of fresh kale (with stems)
Salt
Pepper
A hefty dash of the following spices
- Auntie Arwen's Garlic Insanity
- Tarragon
- Rosemary
- Oregano
1 cup heavy cream (optional - if you plan on keeping this thing on the stove and reboiling a bunch of times to kill the germs... a form of "generational soup" as Masumi would say, add cream when serving)
Heat up the olive oil in your Le Creuset... revel in how gorgeous and evenly it heats. Slice up the sausages into bite sized pieces, and brown in the pot. Dice up the onion. Remove the browned sausage and set it aside for the moment. Toss the onion, garlic, and the fistful of spices into the Le Creuset. As they start to cook, splash in that sake and deglaze all the brown bits from the bottom of the pot. When the onions have cooked down and are tender/translucent, fart a whole bunch of ketchup all over the onions and stir around/cook that ketchup for like 30 seconds. Pour in 4 cups of hot water, add the chicken bouillon powder, bay leaf, all the Beanz from Scratch (and their cooking liquid), sugar, and the sausage you set aside earlier. Put a lid on it and bring to a simmer. While that's getting up to temp, wash the kale and cut the stems out (reserving leafy greens for later). Dice up the stems and add to the pot of soup as it's simmering - that's flavor and fiber (and shit you don't want to eat undercooked). Simmer the whole thing for 20 minutes. When it's done, turn the heat off, tear up all the kale leafy green parts and add it to the broth. Put the lid back on and let the kale sit in the hot soup for like 3 minutes. Stir in the heavy cream if you want to dairy up the whole pot... otherwise add it to each bowl as you serve.