It’s that time of year where people start to order, make and eat warm hearty soups. One of my favorite dishes is Portuguese Kale Soup. Caldo Verde. This soup is thicker, more like a stew, and its
d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s!
This is a memory for me as well as a filling meal.
This soup has a requirement, make in big batches and freeze it! Okay well, there is no requirement like that involved but trust me, you are going to want to make a bunch and freeze it.
I don’t really know the family recipe but I’m sure I can get my grandmother to give it to me. It’s basically a couple packages of frozen kale, split peas soaked overnight, white potatoes peeled, chirico (my gram uses linguicia instead) and a piece of meat with a bone in the middle of it.
Kale is great because it contains nearly 2 TIMES the amount of vitamin K as most the other cruciferous vegetables. Also it’s an excellent source of Vitamin A, C, Copper, and Manganese!
Here is a recipe closest to our family recipe in taste:
found on AllRecipes.com:
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
6 potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (my grandma cubes them)
2 quarts cold water
6 ounces linguica sausage, thinly sliced
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
ground black pepper to taste
1 pound kale, rinsed and julienned (you can buy frozen packaged julienned kale)
Prep- 20 m Cook-30 m Ready In- 1 h
- In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook onion and garlic in 3 tablespoons olive oil for 3 minutes. Stir in potatoes and cook, stirring constantly, 3 minutes more. Pour in water, bring to a boil, and let boil gently for 20 minutes, until potatoes are mushy.
- Meanwhile, in a large skillet over medium-low heat, cook sausage until it has released most of its fat, 10 minutes. Drain.
- Mash potatoes or puree the potato mixture with a blender or food processor. Stir the sausage, salt and pepper into the soup and return to medium heat. Cover and simmer 5 minutes.
- Just before serving, stir kale into soup and simmer, 5 minutes, until kale is tender and jade green. Stir in the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and serve at once.
The site states this is 6 servings, about 406 calories a serving. Now, that seems like a lot of calories but this is an extremely filling bowl of soup (stew). Well deserved 406 with the amount of vitamins and nutrients you are ingesting. One serving will fill you up. Pair this with a big giant glass of water and you are golden.
The recipe above doesn’t have the piece of meat with the bone in it like my grandmother’s does but I’m sure if you really wanted one in there you could figure it out.
You can easily make this a clean eating recipe too:
You can replace the oil with any of your choosing.
If you don’t do potatoes you could use chia to help thicken it, although I have never attempted this nor do I know anyone who has. I just know the principles of chia seeds.
And the linguicia can be taken out and replaced with only beef if you’d like, or nothing at all for the vegans out there. 🙂
Enjoy this!
Share with me what you think!
Tash Fit Life 