Smoked Sausage And Cabbage Soup

by Cassandra Grey
(Connersville)

6 cups chicken broth

1/4 Head of green cabbage, washed and cut into one inch squares.

1 Package inexpensive smoked link sausage, cubed.

1 large white onion, chopped.

5 cloves garlic, minced

3 tbsp butter

1 tbsp cooking oil

Salt and Pepper

Be sure to check out my tips and tricks at the end of the recipe for perfect soup!

First things first. Put your chicken broth and cabbage in a soup pan on the back of the stove, you can wait for it to boil while you get on with everything else.

In a HOT medium-sized frying pan, add the butter, oil, chopped onion, and cubed link sausage. Fry the mixture until the onions are translucent and the sausage has a nice brown color to it. Add the garlic and cook for just a few more moments.

Finally, add your sausage combination to your boiling soup pot. When the cabbage is soft, it's ready to be served!

Tips!

1.) I usually add some of the vegetables I have laying around in my fridge during the first step. A few convenient chopped baby carrots or a stalk or two of celery. It adds some healthy flavor, gives some interest to the soup, and gives you an opportunity to use up veggies that are otherwise going to be thrown out in a few days. Any 'all American' veggies go well.

2.) Chicken broth by the can or carton can get expensive, so I usually open about 4 packs of Chicken Ramen and use the flavor packs from there. It's incredibly inexpensive, and the raw leftover noodles make an excellent oriental salad that my family loves.

3.) What are you going to do with 3/4 of left over cabbage? I came across the same problem. Sometimes I make 2 cabbage soups, about 10 days apart. Another thing you could do is make cabbage rolls with one half, and an oil and vinegar cole slaw with the remaining 1/4. Be creative!

4.) A hot pan cooks better than a cold one

5.) The tablespoon of oil brings the butters smoking point up, and helps to avoid that awful burnt butter taste.

6.) All the butter that went directly into your soup adds LOADS of extra flavor, and who could say no to extra butter, anyway?