Lentil and Sausage Soup

This is a perfect cold weather soup, hearty and a bit picoso.  I like mine straight, though some prefer it with some rice or with a heavy, whole grain bread.

Lentils also work very well with ham (without the sausage and the hot flavors.)

The soup has a wonderful flavor, plenty of color, and some good complexity of flavors and textures.

A dollup of real sour cream works well with this soup, but don't mix.

You see the two kinds of sausage that I like to use in this bowl shot - sweet Italian sausage links and fresh, spicy hot bulk sausage.

Ingredients

1 pound bag of dried lentils  (washed and cleaned several times)
2 large onions
2 large potatoes
1-2 turnips
2 pounds of carrots
1 small celery bunch (8ish stalks)
2 garlic cloves, crushed or finely sliced
5-6 browned, cooked sweet Italian sausage links
1-2 pounds of spicy, fresh bulk sausage
1/2 pound of bacon, fried lightly, diced
2 bags of previously prepared, frozen sausage broth  (substitute concentrated pork or beef broth)

Assembly

1. The cleaned lentils can be soaked or boiled and soaked depending upon your available time or preference.  An overnight soak is usually sufficient for lentils, or a five-minute roaring boil followed by no heat on a covered pan for an hour or so.  When cooked, discard the cooking and soaking liquid.

2. Broil, grill, or slow cook the sweet Italian sausage.

Note 1: I like to brown the thick sausage links on a hot charcoal grill, followed by a slow oven roast (covered pan) at 170-ish degrees.  This results in a very flavorful, juicy, but lean final product.  Be sure to save and de-fat the resulting sausage broth from the oven pan.

3. Fry the bacon lightly, dice into pretty small pieces - not salad sprinkle hard, but not droopy either.
4. Sauté the onions in bacon grease until they begin to caramelize.  Then throw in the soup pot.
5. Boil the lightly peeled, diced potatoes until pretty well done.  You want this vegetable to get a little mushy to add substance to the soup.  If you want to be able to see potato pieces in the lentil soup, dice the potatoes into larger sizes.
6. Boil the peeled, diced turnip until well done.  Turnips work well with lentils, but don't over do it.
7. Boil the peeled (or thoroughly scrubbed), diced carrots lightly.
8. Sauté the celery in the bacon grease onion skillet, cook thoroughly, but don't brown.

Note 2: It is better to sauté onion separately from celery.  Generally they are cooked to slightly different degrees of doneness (is that a word?), so cooking separately gives you better control.  But the two veggies release significantly different levels of moisture when cooked.  Celery releases a ton of water, onion a little.  So, if you are trying to achieve some amount of browning or caramelization on the onions, it is a whole lot easier without the released celery moisture.

Note 3: You generally don't want to add moisture or broth from cooking vegetables to a meat-based soup.  Plenty of flavor from the meat stock or broth, and you don't need to worry about watering down or making bitter the flavors of the soup.

9. Gently cook the bulk sausage in the onion skillet.  Don't overcook.  You want the bulk sausage to be juicy, not hard.  Feel free to add some roasted, hot peppers or crushed hot peppers to taste.

10. Throw all of the drained ingredients into a large soup pan.  I use a 10-12 quart saucepan for this recipe.
11. Add the sausage broth to the desired level.  A little water is okay if you started with good, concentrated broth.
12. Season to taste with sea salt and pepper.

This stuff freezes pretty well, and is good in the fridge for 2-3 days.  Each day it gets better, but please remember food safety.


If you have questions, I try to answer them.