Sausage, Kale, and Lentil Soup

I came across this soup recipe by Rachel Ray a few years ago and I've been making it on a regular basis since. It's hearty, delicious, and has nutritious ingredients like kale and lentils. It's great for bringing to work for lunch, filling as a meal on its own, and comforting in chilly weather.

Sausage, kale, and lentil soup with sweet potato

Each time I make this, I make some tweaks if an ingredient is not available at the grocery store. I've used sweet Italian sausage and added crushed red pepper flakes if hot Italian sausage was out at the store. If I can't find Fresno peppers, I'll use a different red chili pepper that is available or crushed red pepper flakes. I've used curly kale if Tuscan kale was not available.

Sweet Italian sausage

I've always made this with a Russet potato. But since it's fall, I decided to change it up a bit and used sweet potato instead which has more nutritious benefits. So the pictures I've shared here will have sweet potato in them. 

I often buy pre-chopped packages of kale, which probably has more in quantity than a bunch of kale does. I use the entire bag in the soup. Pre-chopped bags usually have the stem intact, and I don't bother to remove them for this recipe since it's time consuming. And this is a soup, so the stems get soft while it cooks. But if I buy a bunch of kale, I'll remove the stems in those instances.

Tomato paste and white wine really add flavor to the soup so I would not suggest omitting or substituting these ingredients.

The one difference from the recipe that I make is the amount of lentils. I use 1 to 1-1/4 cups of lentils instead of 1-3/4 cups that the recipe lists. I think that amount of uncooked lentils would soak up too much liquid and I wonder if it is typo in the published recipe.

I like to use red lentils

This is a chunky soup. So I like to reserve 1 cup of chicken stock and wait to add it in the last 5 minutes that the soup simmers. This way the soup has some liquid in case it reduced too much while it simmered.

Leftovers are just as delicious and I never get tired of eating this soup!

My Rating (out of 5): 4.5