The weather the past couple days has been horrible. Cold, windy, cloudy, and raining. Tracy sent me an email yesterday asking me to make this for dinner and it sounded like a great idea to me. I've been making this for 8 years or so but never put anything on paper for it. Always just shot from the hip and made it up as I went along. This time I wrote things down as I went, adjusted, and put it into a Word document. This one kinda goes out to my good friend Joe (@xray) He and I have shared a bunch of soup (and other) recipes over the past couple months. I mentioned this soup to him but didn't have anything on paper that I could share. Here we go!!
The base ingredients:
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That's my homemade spicy Italian sausage. Put it into the Dutch oven to brown
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Add all the canned goods
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Add spices
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Cut up zucchini and put it in
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Let simmer for a while to break down the spices
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Got some cheesy garlic bread I threw together
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Add the tortellini. At this point the pot was pretty full and I was afraid the tortellini would overflow. Took some of the soup and put it into another pan to make room. That's why this one is so messy
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Bread all done
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Get yourself a big steaming bowl
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Grab some bread, add some Parmesan cheese and I'm ready to eat!!
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This soup is very bold, very rich, flavorful, and has a lot of complexity...as well as having a nice spice tingle. For those with tastes that lean toward the milder side, you may want to back off the spices a little bit, taste as you go, and add more as necessary. I know that Joe and his wife are into the healthy side of eating and he does a lot of soups that are made sans the meat. This would certainly stand on it's own without the sausage so if you're into healthy stuff, it can be nixed. Same with the peppers. Between the cayenne, black pepper, and crushed red pepper, this does have a bit of a glow to it. Not over the top by any means but it'd kill my family that lives in KCThey are wimps where spice is concerned. Here is the recipe:
1 lb ground Italian sausage
4 cans beef broth
3 cans Italian style diced tomatoes
1 can green beans drained
1 zucchini sliced, then slices quartered
1 ½ t oregano
½ t basil
1 T garlic powder
½ t black pepper
2 t minced onions
½ t crushed red pepper
1 ½ t salt
¼ t cayenne pepper
This was made for Tracy who really likes as much broth as she can get. You could also back off with the tomatoes and beef broth to make it heartier but if so, I'd recommend backing off the spices too. This has a ton of flavor and it may be overpowering to drop the canned goods but not the spices.
Got something really crazy on the agenda for dinner tonight,
Robert
