The Best White Bean Kale Sausage Soup

One of my favorite soups ever, sausage kale soup! This gluten free soup is perfect for meal prep and comes together in just half an hour or so with 8 ingredients. Leftovers are EVEN BETTER, so make a double batch and enjoy this soup all week! PS - not terrible with no-knead bread. Not terrible at all.

I have been SO excited to tell you about this soup. It's my new fall signature dish, and I haven't met a single person who doesn't like it. 

It's simple, first and foremost. The ingredients are easy to find, there aren't too many of them, and they all add a ton of flavor to the finished dish. The whole soup can be made in about 30 minutes, and you can eat it right away or let it simmer for a little while, whatever works. 

This soup is gluten free and can be dairy free with the cheese on top omitted, and I use local sausage and kale because the flavor is SO much better. You can use any sausage you like, hot or mild, any kind of kale you can find, even pre-chopped bagged stuff to save even more time. The kale and sausage combine with stock, tomatoes, onion, garlic, and that's IT. Throw in some white beans (or skip them for a lower carb option), blanket the whole thing in parmesan, and good to go. 

I love this for nights when people are kind of coming and going, which seems to happen so much more in the fall, and I love it for holiday weeks where you definitely need to eat but making multiple dishes for a meal isn't as much fun when Thursday involves SO many dishes and steps. Let's do it!

More Easy Soup Recipes

Ingredients

You need sausage, kale, onion, garlic, canned tomatoes, and chicken stock. Beans if you'd like, maybe some parm for topping. I've made this with rosemary and thyme and the extra flavors are great, but I wanted to write the recipe as simply as possible, so feel free to add some extra flavor ingredients if you'd like.

Step By Step Instructions

First, place the sausage in a soup pot over medium-high heat with a drizzle of oil. Cook the sausage, breaking it up with a spoon as you go, until it's crumbly, browned, and cooked through, maybe 10 minutes or so. 

While the sausage is working, I shred the kale, chop the onion, and mince the garlic. You can also do this in advance if you're organized! But, the sausage cook time is almost exactly the amount of time you'll need to prep the veggies. 

When the sausage is cooked through, add the onion and stir it into the sausage for about two minutes, then add the kale and garlic. 

Stir the veggies into the sausage and onions for 5 minutes or so just to start to wilt, then add the stock, the tomatoes with their juices, and the beans, also undrained. The bean juice is key here; it helps thicken the soup just slightly and give it a really hearty consistency. 

That's it! Seriously. Let the soup simmer for as long as you can manage, and add more stock if it reduces a lot or gets very thick.

Taste the soup every once awhile and add salt to your preference. The soup should be very flavorful but how much salt you need will depend on your tomatoes, stock, and sausage, which all have salt in them. I usually add ½ teaspoon salt and then taste + sprinkle in more as I go.

Seriously, nothing could be easier. I've made this dozens of times - for Halloween, for mountain weekends, and just a few days ago when some neighbors came over to hang. The reviews have been glowing each time, and the fact that the soup is so simple means people want the recipe to make all season long for their families. I can't rave about it enough. 

Meal Prep and Storage

• If I want to cook this freshly but prep in advance, I wash and chop the kale, onion, and garlic in advance to save time when I make the soup.
• This entire dish is wonderful made in advance and kept in the fridge for up to 4 days, or it can be frozen for a few months.
• When serving this from the freezer, be sure to taste for salt as sometimes dishes get a little bland after they've been in the freezer for awhile. A little more salt will bring it back to life!

PS this isn't terrible to watch in front of a football game either. 

Enjoy!

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