Italian Sausage and Black Bean Soup
I created this recipe during the quarantine days of covid-19. It's been a delicious, simple, comforting recipe to make for those long, cold days.
Ingredients
- 2 Italian sausages hot or mild, whichever you prefer
- 5 cups water
- 1 medium onion
- 1 tsp salt
- 4 sm-med potatoes washed, peeled and chopped
- 2 med carrots washed, peeled and chopped
- 2 cups black beans cooked
- 1 can diced tomatoes (1 can = 796mL or 28oz)
- 1 handful fresh parsley* washed and chopped
- 2 bay leaves
- 1-1/2 tsp salt or to taste
- 1/4 tsp pepper or to taste
- 1/4 tsp chili flakes optional
Instructions
-
In a med-large sized pot, combine the sausages and water with about 1 tsp of salt and 1/4 of the onion. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook until the sausages are cooked through (about 30 minutes).
-
Remove the sausages from the broth, discard the onion, and cut the sausages into small pieces. Pour the broth into a separate container.
-
Chop up the remaining 3/4 of the onion and fry in a bit of oil in the base of the pot till transparent or just starting to brown. Add the broth back in, and bring it to a boil.
-
Add the potatoes and carrots to the broth, and cook until just starting to soften. Now add the sausage pieces, black beans, and diced tomatoes, and the remaining ingredients. Bring the soup back to a gentle boil.
-
Reduce the heat to a simmer, season to taste with salt and pepper, and allow the soup to cook 30 minutes. Remove and discard the bay leaves. Serve.
Recipe Notes
Tip: Unless I really plan how I'm going to use it, one bunch of fresh parsley is the kind of thing that's likely to go bad in my fridge before I can use it all up. So, I just wash whatever I don't think I'll get a chance to use up fresh, and then I freeze it for soup! If you have a lot, just divide the washed parsley into "Handful portions," and put it in ziplock bags for an easy addition to whatever soup you happen to make.