Sick Day Sausage and Bean Soup

First off, if you’ve purchased our Eating Wins Races cookbook over the past month, THANK YOU. The reception has truly been beyond our wildest dreams and we so appreciate all of your kind words! It’s so fun to see the recipes I worked on getting out there in the world. (If you haven’t purchased it yet…well, you can find it here.)

I want to use this blog to start a little weekly series (ahem, ever other weekly? Every few weeks? we shall see) where I share something we’ve been eating … it might be something I created, or a recipe from elsewhere that we enjoyed (and let’s be real, probably heavily modified). Maybe some weeks we’ll talk about race fuel, or which kind of gummy bears make the best ride snacks and which kinds will melt through your pocket and all over your back and make you think you have a weird green rash (hypothetically speaking, of course).

Recipes shared here will be less tested and precise than those in the cookbook, so you should take them with a grain (sorry, have you learned nothing from me? a PALMFUL) of salt and consider them to be more inspiration than doctrine.

Today we’re going to talk about soup. I love soup. And when I am sick, I need soup. Our holiday gathering turned out to be a bit of a superspreader event this year, and Macky came down with strep throat two days after Christmas. Wa wa waaa. While I avoided any serious illness, I had a few days of feeling sub par, which I spent transforming pantry and freezer items into soup (because there was no way I was going to the grocery store). My biggest triumphs in the kitchen are always when I make something delicious without having to go shopping, and this sausage soup was a victory that I decided was worth sharing.

Post Christmas doldrums…

I had dry alubia blanca beans in the pantry, turkey broth and frozen beef sausage from our 1/2 cow in the freezer, carrots and celery withering in the bottom of the fridge, and I was able to steal an onion and bunch of kale from my parents (who have recently moved in to a house two blocks away from us, very conveniently located from fridge-raiding). You could absolutely use canned white beans in this soup, but being able to use the bean broth really adds some flavor and thickness.

Ingredients:

1 lb dry white beans, cooked with broth (or approx 3 cans of white beans)
2 lbs italian sausage
1tsp olive oil
1 large white onion, diced
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
2 large carrots, sliced
3-4 stalks of celery, sliced
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp red pepper flakes
5-6 cups of broth (can be combo of chicken broth, bean broth or water)
1 bunch kale, destemmed and chopped (if you have it)
1 lemon (if you have it)
Salt to taste (depending on the saltiness of your sausage and broth, you may not need additional salt)

Instructions:

Cook your beans according to your desired method. I blasted mine in an instant pot for approximately 40 minutes with ample water, 1 tsp of salt, and a handle of arbol chiles (because I have what is a completely scientifically unfounded belief that spicy food cures illness). Cooking time for dry beans varies MASSIVELY depending on altitude and the age of the beans. Just make sure they are fully cooked!

Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pot. When hot, sauté onions until they begin to soften. Add carrots, celery and garlic. Add thyme, red pepper flakes and few hearty cranks of freshly ground black pepper. When the onion is fairly soft, move the vegetables to the side of the pot and brown the meat.

When the meat is browned, add the broth. I had about 3 cups of turkey broth leftover from Christmas dinner, and then used about 2 cups of cooking liquid from the beans. Add all the beans and additional broth or water if needed to get to your desired consistency. Add the kale.

Cook everything together for 20-30 minutes so the flavors mingle, and then finish with the lemon. Top with grated parm or fresh basil (if you have it, which you probably don’t, since you are making this from your deathbed).

*To stretch the leftovers, add extra broth and throw in some short cut pasta like macaroni or ditalini for a pasta e fagioli type situation.

We ended up eating this for several meals in a row, which was a lifesaver for the few days where we weren’t feeling so good. Luckily Macky bounced back super fast once he got on antibiotics and I never ended up getting too sick, so we really only missed a handful of training days, and now we’re fully back in action.

If you give this soup a try, let me know what you think!

Xx, Syd

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