Spicy Sweet Potato and Smoked Sausage Soup

Since I’ve been off of dairy to see if it’ll help ease my little guy’s tummy pains, I’ve been searching for new recipes that don’t use milk or cheese, since many of my staple menu items use these ingredients.  I tried this recipe a little while ago for the first time and really loved it, so I thought I would share it with you all, with a few minor modifications that I’ve made to suit our personal taste.  I got this recipe from a recipes program that I got for Christmas from my brother’s girlfriend called MasterCook Deluxe, in the Mealtime cookbook, recipe coutesy of The Florida Department of Agriculture. 

8 ounces smoked sausage, diced
1/2 cup onion, diced
1/2 cup celery, diced
1 tablespoon jalapeño pepper, minced (I used a whole jalapeño pepper)
3 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and large-diced
2 tablespoons flour
3 cups chicken stock (I used 6 cups)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
Green onions, garnish

1. Sauté sausage in a large sauce pan for 5 minutes over medium heat.  I used local Pioneer Meats smoked all pork farmer’s sausage (the best sausage in the world) that comes in packages of approximately 800 grams (1 3/4 pounds or 28 ounces).  The last time I made this, I used one whole link which would be about 14 ounces instead of the 8 ounces called for by the recipe and it was a little too much meat, so this time I did more like 10 ounces.  I just sliced it as opposed to dicing it.

 

2. Add vegetables and continue to sauté for an additional 5 minutes. 

 
I cut up the celery and onions quite small, and if you can see on the picture, my trick for cutting onions is to cut the onion in half and then in slices so that the layers are like a rainbow and then cut around the curve so that the layers work to your advantage to create nice small pieces with less cutting. 

 
For the sweet potato, I hate cutting these because they are quite dense and hard, sort of like trying to cut a huge carrot, but I have found that it helps to cut lengthwise with the grain.  I cut the sweet potato into bite-size pieces approximately 2 cm cubed (1/2 to 3/4 inches).  Also, the recipe calls for 1 tablespoon jalapeño pepper, but I found this wasn’t spicy enough, so I just did the whole pepper this time. 

 

3. Add flour and cook for 2 more minutes.  The first time I tried this, I thought it was really weird to add flour to vegetables without using any water or butter or something, but it actually works quite well. 

 

4. Add stock, salt and pepper and stir until smooth.  Since the soup was quite thick the first time, my husband Joe requested that I use more broth, because a lot of the broth seemed to cook out when cooking the sweet potatoe, so this time I used 6 cups of broth instead of 3, using 6 teaspoons of chicken OXO with 6 cups of hot water.  This soup would probably taste quite different if you used actual chicken stock as opposed to OXO, but I like it this way.

 

5. Simmer for 20 minutes until potatoes are soft. Garnish with green onions.  I left out the green onions mostly because I didn’t have any, but also because it seemed unnecessary to me. 

 

So there you go!  I really enjoyed this recipe and I think you’d like it – so give it a try!