Crockpot Kale Soup

I am the soup queen in the winter. It's magically all I crave and all I want to eat. Warm. Delish. Soup. So with today being a holiday and a day off from work I decided to make some soup to last me for the next two weeks or so. I mean in all honesty, I wind up freezing 90% of what I make and soup is no exception. 

When it comes to soups it is a labor of love but there is no need to over-complicate it. Feel free to swap things in and out as you please. If you want to make a vegetarian kale soup, leave out the meats and use vegetable stock or just plain old water. One of the things you may want to do however, is soak your beans over night. Why? Because let's face it, beans can make you gas-y. If you want to cut down on some of that believe it or not, soaking beans can help remove indigestible complex sugars. It will also significantly cut down on your cooking time preserving nutrients and proteins that makes beans so beneficial. All you need to do is rinse and sift through your beans like you normally do and then cover with and leave to soak over night. In the morning rinse them and you are good to go.

Kale after being prepped

Sliced Potatoes

These are the meats I used

Another thing I do to save some prep time is make the most out of my prep machine. I love my prep machine. If you don't have one and cook often, consider getting one. All I needed to do for this recipe, is peel and prep the veggies and meats, pop in my slicing disc, and send everything through the machine. Even the kale and potatoes. Plus the thinner the potatoes the fast they cook.

So, this is the recipe I used. Feel free to adapt it and make it your own after all, that's half the fun right?

Crock Pot Kale Soup

Your crockpot will look full once everything is added and raw

for a 5 qt crock pot

Ingredients:

• 1/2 head of kale, chopped
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 3 carrots, sliced
• 2 potatoes, cubed or sliced
• 2 links of linguica, sliced
• 2 links of chorizo, sliced
• 2 cups red kidney beans, soaked
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 32oz organic beef flavored culinary stock (substitute with bouillon cubes)
• Water
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Steps:

1. Add stock to crockpot. Add in ingredients one by one stirring after each addition. Cover ingredients with water.
2. Set crock pot to high for 6 hours or low for 10 hours and wait.
3. Add salt and pepper to taste and enjoy.

The finish product.

Ginger-Carrot Soup

If you don't care for ginger and don't really like carrots, you might want to stop reading now.

Tonight I decided I needed a soup. One I haven't enjoyed in a long time. Enter ginger-carrot soup. The ingredients listed below are as the recipe calls for them. I have a bad habit of never measuring things for soups or stews. I usually just grab 2.5lbs of carrots, 1/2 a large onion, and 2inches of ginger root. Tonight I also substituted the vegetable broth with chicken broth because it was all I had and I was entirely to tired to run to the store. I truly tasted no difference. Also I omitted the sour cream topping because I didn't feel it was entirely necessary, and my lazy butt didn't have any. =]

This is such an easy soup to make and it reheats well. So I doubled the recipe and I'm freezing 3/4 of it. Since I am a single lady, I do this with a lot of stuff so I essentially have a freezer full of frozen foods I can reheat whenever. Cheaper than frozen dinners, healthier, and tastier too.

CAUTION: When you are blending, please please please be careful. If your blender doesn't seal well and you don't wait a little bit for your mixture to cool you might have an explosion of gingery carrot goodness all over your kitchen! Since I doubled my batch, when I got to the second blender-full I got lazy and didn't wait for my mixture to cool a little bit before attempting to overfill my blender. So even though my blender has a great seal, I made a mess.

Ginger-Carrot Soup

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup yellow or white onion, chopped
• 2 tablespoons ginger, peeled and grated
• 3 1/2 cups carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, ground
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Reduced fat sour cream and chopped green onions for topping (optional)

 

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook until tender and translucent. Add grated ginger and cook until fragrant.
2. Add carrots, broth, nutmeg and salt and bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook 15 minutes or until carrots are fork-tender. 
4. Allow mixture to cool approximately 5 minutes. Carefully pour (or spoon) mixture into a blender and puree, adding water as needed to thin the mixture.
5. Pour soup into serving bowls and top with a dollop of sour cream or yogurt and chopped green onions, if desired.