HEARTY AND HEALTHY TUSCAN KALE SOUP

Soup. There are good soups and not-so-good-soups. My favorite type of soup has great flavors and satisfies my hunger. No side of bread needed to fill up the stomach. Just pack up the soup with delicious, whole ingredients that are going to work well together. That's my definition of a hearty and healthy soup. This tuscan kale soup recipe is packed full of incredible ingredients that are also good for you. So, I guess this is a good soup which is also good for you. Cool.

LET'S TALK ABOUT SAUSAGE

Yes. Sausage. This is going to be the ingredient for this recipe that has the greatest capacity to change the flavor profile of the soup. There is no uniform recipe for spicy Italian sausage that is handed out to butchers across the nation. Some butchers or grocery stores are going to put in more (or different) seasonings than others. Some will put in more red pepper flakes. The sausage that I used had fairly mild sausage seasoning and a relatively high degree of heat. Just please know that all sausage is different when you are preparing your soup! Taste, adjust the seasonings and taste again. It will come out wonderfully for you too.

PICKING THE RIGHT KALE

There are a couple different kinds of kale out there, so let's make sure we're using the right one. This is not an article on all the different kinds of kale (but you can read about them on OneGreenPlanet), but we should talk about Curly and Lacinato.

Curly Kale: This is the kind of kale that we want for this recipe! When choosing your kale, make sure that it feel crisp and doesn't have any yellow spots on it. I never know what is sprayed on leafy veggies, so I try to find the organic stuff whenever I can. We're not going to use the stalks or really tough ribs. Just tear the green leafy parts off and we're good to go. One bundle of kale will be more than enough for this recipe.

Lacinato Kale: This is not what I used in the recipe, but it can be used in a pinch. Again, no stalks if you choose to use this type of kale. Tear it up into pieces and you're ready to go.

QUICK COOKING TIP: I have a couple quick cooking tips for this tuscan kale soup recipe today. Here they are:

1. When you are cooking the sausage, once it starts to brown you really have to chop it up. Sausage needs work to get it to the right consistency. I use a flat blade wooden spatula to really mash it up.
2. While we're talking about sausage (again), let's talk about the fat that will cook out of the sausage. There is going to be about ¼ cup (approximately) of fat that cooks out of the sausage. You can either drain it off when you've finished browning or you can skim it right off the top of the soup when it comes to a boil. I wanted to keep the fat in the pot to add some flavor to the veggies, so I just skimmed off the fat with a ladle when the soup came to a boil.  Either way, it's a pretty important step. Nobody likes greasy soup.

Sometimes I feel like I should write an Ode to Tuscan Kale Soup... But for today, I wrote a recipe instead. Let's take a look.