lentil soup with sausage, chard and garlic
Every year around this time — well into the winter season, but long after we found it charmingly brisk, as it is when you do googly-eyed things like ice skating around a sparkling tree at the holidays — we get some sort of brittle cold snap in the weather that catches me by surprise. Even though we live in New York, a place where a cold snap or two a January is as predictable as being hosed by some unspeakably awful puddle of street juice slush by a car spinning through an intersection; even though I’ve lived in this exact climate for every one of my thirty-I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it years; and even though I have the audacity to look forward to winter every sticky concrete-steaming summer, when I walk outside on that first 20-degree day and the wind gusts into my face and renders it hard to exhale, the very first thing I do is audibly holler in rage and disbelief, “WHAT THE WHAT?” I am nothing — as we joke when my little son tries to clomp down the hallway in his dad’s massive boots and immediately falls on his tush — if not Harvard Material.
Estimated Nutrition (whole recipe, rough)
Counts 14 of 17 ingredients — the other 3 aren't in our nutrition table and contribute nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume — 14 portions →
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Pork | 100g cooked | 242 |
| Olive Oil | 1 tbsp (14g) | 119 |
| Lentil | 1/2 cup cooked (99g) | 115 |
| Romano Cheese | 1 oz (28g) cheddar | 113 |
| Onion | 1 medium (110g) | 44 |
| Carrot | 1 medium (61g) | 25 |
| Tomato | 1 medium (123g) | 22 |
| Chili | 1 tsp (2.7g) | 8 |
| Spinach | 1 cup raw (30g) | 7 |
| Celery Stalks | 1 stalk (40g) | 6 |
| Black Pepper | 1 tsp ground (2.3g) | 6 |
| Garlic | 1 clove (3g) | 4 |
| Bay Leaf | 1 leaf (0.6g) | 2 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
| Soup | not in our table | 0 |
| Water | not in our table | 0 |
| Swiss Chard | not in our table | 0 |
Totals for the whole recipe, adding one typical portion per ingredient — listed above. Quantities in the recipe are not counted, so this is a rough guide only — not suitable for medical or dietary planning.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup olive oil, divided
- 4 large links of sweet Italian sausage, casings removed (I used half of this, preferring the sausage to not dominate the soup’s flavor [update] and from the comments, it sounds like most of you preferred it with just 2 links as well)
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 2 celery stalks, sliced or diced
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into half-moons or diced
- 4 cloves garlic, sliced (reserve half for later in recipe)
- Kosher salt
- A pinch of crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
- 1 cup brown lentils, sorted and rinsed
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
- 6 cups water
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 3 to 4 cups shredded or thinly ribboned Swiss chard leaves or kale
- Grated Pecorino Romano cheese to finish