Kale Soup - Meagady Meagz Style

I, as I’m sure I’ve said before, am not a huge soup eater. But living in this weather (ummm yeah it snowed last night) makes me crave it from time to time to warm me up! I may still be a bit of a wussy despite living through six New England winters and I almost count last winter as two! If you live here you probably do too!!

So when I picked up some beautiful kale at the farmers’ market last weekend I got inspired to make a caldo verde. Electra’s Portuguese self was always telling me about it, so I figured it would be a good time to try it.

So I picked up some spicy chorizo and got to work. Now, if you don’t know, traditional caldo verde has kale, chorizo, potatoes, garlic and onions. Thing was, I had a ton of veggies from the week before that I needed to use before they went bad. You all know how I feel about throwing away food! So I threw them in as well. The result was terrific and it warmed me right up. And there was enough to eat it for several days after!

Here’s the breakdown:

1 large bunch kale, torn up

2 shallots, diced

leafy part of the celery heart, chopped small

½ quart sliced baby bellas

1 small red hot pepper cut in half

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 ears corn, cut off the cob

1lb chorizo sliced into moons

1 sweet potato diced tiny

olive oil

1 can Rotel

2 cups cranberry/shelling beans

2 packets Sazon seasoning

pepper

2 bay leaves

32 oz chicken broth

I put the first 10 ingredients into my cast iron dutch oven. I sautéd them until everything was wilted down. Especially the kale. Then I added the Rotel, beans, sazon, fresh pepper, bay leaves and chicken broth. I let it simmer on the lowest of low heat covered for about 2 hours.

It wasn’t traditional, but it was very good. And all the veggies made me feel great about eating it and about not wasting all that yummy veg! I made a batch of cornbread to go with it, which is also not very Portuguese, but what can I say? I’m southern!