This hearty Kale, Sausage, and Cannellini Soup uses Italian-inspired ingredients such as sweet Italian sausages, olive oil, garlic, and red wine vinegar. It’s a comforting, everyday recipe, perfect for colder weather.

This soup has a clean taste, by which I mean that the broth is light and flavorful, and, with the exception of the onion, you can taste all the individual ingredients individually. I especially love the way the sausage acts like a meat dumpling and its flavor is lovely contrast to the rest of the soup.

Social Learning

When leftover, the sausage blends more than contrasts. Still, though, it’s delicious.

Others of the Make It Like a Man! posse suggested that the sausage be cut into smaller pieces, so that you could get some in every bite. I like this idea, but I also like the way I did it. 

I didn’t remove the sausage casings, and I don’t really mind the result. But I can imagine most people wanting them removed. If you do, still try to keep the sausage in chunks, rather than scrambling it. Why? Because that’s how I’d like it. I suppose you can do what you want, though, if you’re not inviting me over. Anyway, if you’re going to remove the casings, you could just use bulk Italian sausage and separate it into chunks.

Kale, Kale, Fire and Snow…

I used curly kale for the soup I photographed for this post, but I’d use Tuscan kale.

Kale is a pain in the ass, but I do think it’s worth it in this soup. You have to divorce the leaves from the stems. You have to wash it because even though it might look clean, once you get your hands into it, you’ll inevitably find grit. What’s really a pain, though, is slicing the leaves into pieces. Even if you know what you’re doing, there’s a lot of kale to go through. You can’t rush this, though, or be lax about it, because you absolutely want it to be bitesize or smaller in the finished soup.

But what I love about the kale, though, is that it maintains some texture in the finished soup. 

The Backstory

Look at me, abandoning my Instant Pot! This doesn’t feel like a set-it-and-forget-it kind of soup. I wanted the components cooked to varying degrees, and didn’t want to work out how to do that in a pressure cooker. There’s also something nice about smelling and tasting the food as you go. 

The IP did sit up there, though, on the cupboard, looking down at me disapprovingly as I was cooking this soup. I eventually had to turn it around and make it face the wall.

Kale, Sausage, and Cannellini Soup

Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! unless otherwise credited. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. Thank you, ⌘+C. References: Sheilds, John. “Cape Cod Portuguese Kale Soup.” The Best American Recipes, 2005-2006, ed. by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens. Houghton Mifflin (Boston) 2005, pp. 36-37. Helen Back Cafe, Love and Lemons. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #13 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs.

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