gnocchi soup with chicken sausage and kale
Another entry in the “weeknight soups you can make in 45 minutes” category, this soup has all the qualifications of a January soup savior: a healthy-enough balance of sexy colors and satisfying textures with cozy broth, hot heat, big garlic energy, and a mercifully short cooking time, cookable in a large batch to reheat for lunch all week.
This recipe is actually one of my oldest. It dates back to the ashes of my oldest site, the burial ground on which this one is built, inspired by a cleaning spree that revealed a packet of vacuum-sealed gnocchi with an expiration date over a year prior (my quality of life in those days was not high). More skill, however, hasn’t made the soup any more complicated, still featuring the same handful of simple ingredients, simmered just long enough to bring their talents together.
While chicken sausage and kale get more screen time in the dish, the main character of this soup story is the gnocchi, an underrated soup starch that enthusiastically steps in for pasta in all variety of noodle soup recipes. Here, though, I make it a point to use mini gnocchi boys: their small format keeps them on their best behavior by preventing them from become too dominant in the dish even though they inflate like little sponges in broth. Most normal grocery stores tend to have these in the pasta aisle, and while you can definitely swap them for the big boys, it’s worth seeking out the babies for this recipe.
This soup is a rare natural beauty that needs no toppings to be presentable, but don’t let that be a reason not to shower some cheese or sprinkle some extra chilis on your bowl.
RECIPE
Simple and balanced: chicken sausage (protein) + kale (health) + chilis (spicy!) + broth (healing!) + garlic (vampire prevention!) + mini gnocchis (joy, fun, aliveness!) come together for a quick n cozy weeknight soup in 45 minutes.
Effortful time: 15 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes
YOU NEED
1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 lbs. mild Italian chicken sausage, removed from casings; sub any other kind you prefer
One baseball-sized onion, diced
Red chilis, to taste—I used 2 tbsp. of chopped Calabrian chiles in oil (spicy!), but you can use a hefty pinch of chili flakes if you’d rather; you just won’t get that orange oil float that I did
1 tbsp. minced garlic, this was 3 jumbo cloves for me
2 tsp. Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper, to taste
12 cups chicken stock, I used a combination of homemade and Better Than Bouillon
16 oz. mini potato gnocchi; I used DeLallo brand
1 bunch Tuscan / black / dino kale, big stems taken out and leaves torn into bite-sized pieces
MAKE IT
Brown the sausage. Heat 1 tbsp. of olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the sausage and brown, breaking it up with a spoon into small bite-sized pieces until it has nice caramelized color, about 6 minutes.
Sauté the aromatics. Clear a space in the pot and allow the oil to pool there, tilting the pot if necessary. Add the diced onion and chiles and allow to cook, stirring together with the sausage to sweat the onions, until lightly translucent—about 4 minutes. Repeat the process of clearing a space and pooling oil, then add the garlic and allow to cook 30 seconds more or until fragrant but not brown.
Make it soup. Add the 12 cups of broth and 2 tsp. of Italian seasoning. Salt and pepper; how much you do depends on the broth you used. Partially cover and simmer for 40 minutes.
Finish the soup. At the 40 minute mark, add the gnocchi and chopped kale. Simmer 4 minutes, or until the gnocchi has all floated to the top of the broth and the kale is a deep, dark green. Ladle into bowls and serve.