Sometimes Jeffy Does All the Cooking - Guest Post by Jeffy the Great

Emily and I are a pretty good team in life and in the kitchen. She does a lot of the cooking, but I also cook up many delicious meals!

One of my best is Sausage Soup. We call it "Snausage Soup", because that's funner to say. It's probably more accurately called "Chicken Sausage, Pasta, Vegetable Soup", because it has all those things.

Here's a pic of the finished product

It's got tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, chicken sausage, and brown rice pasta.

I made this soup on March 31, 2015. I remember the date, because it was my birthday. Why was I making dinner on my birthday? Cuz I'm awesome, that's why.

Don't get me wrong, Emily got me lots of great stuff for my birthday, including a nice dinner out. It's just that we were pretty tired on this night, and just wanted a tasty, quick dinner. Earlier in the day, she brought Lisa and some Magnolia Cupcakes to my work, and surprised me along with our friend, Joy.

Emily was doing some Yoga in our Yoga studio.

So I got out all the ingredients for the soup.

I started with 3 packs of Trader Joe's Sweet Italian Style Chicken Sausage. We use these because we like TJ's, it's cheaper than most other chicken sausage options, and because it does not have any pork casing.*

You start by cutting the sausage into about 1/4" full moons, and then sautéing those until they get a little brown.

While those full moon sausages are browning, dice up four whole onions. If you're tempted to cry from all that onion chopping, just look over at your cute wife who's doing yoga and posed in some pretty attractive positions. That'll cheer ya up!

With all the sausages and onions in the pot, it'll look like this...

Here's where shopping at TJ's comes in handy. The next step is to add diced celery, shredded carrots, shredded cabbage, and some canned whole tomatoes.**

You dice up the celery, add the whole bag of cabbage, the whole bag of carrots, and mix it all together. Then, you add the two cans of unsalted, whole plum tomatoes and mix it some more.

At this point, you add in all the spices you think will be good in the soup. I recommend a lot of salt and pepper. I'll also add oregano, poultry seasoning, dried rosemary, garlic powder, and a pinch of red pepper flakes at this point.***

Now, add in about 10 cups low-sodium chicken broth. You can use beef or vegetable broth here, too. I use about 8 cups of broth and 2 cups of water because the TJ's broth comes in 4 cup containers and I only want to use two containers.

It'll look about like this, hopefully. Make sure you save about 2 inches at the top of your pot, because you've still got to add the pasta. 

Bring that whole pot to a boil. It'll take a while. I recommend checking Facebook on your phone at this point, or watching Emily do yoga some more.

Watch wife do yoga while waiting for soup to boil

When it finally boils, add four cups dry BROWN RICE pasta. Once you got those pastas in there, it'll be full up to the top of your pot, like this:

Turn heat down to low and let it simmer for at least as long as the pasta takes to cook, about 12 minutes. 

It's very important to use brown rice pasta for this soup, as opposed to regular semolina flour, white pasta. The brown rice pasta starts to break down slightly when you cook it in broth in such a way that it thickens the broth. It helps give this soup a stew-like consistency, as opposed to a watery consistency. It gets even thicker when you reheat it then next day, too. 

You're done! Put that soup in a bowl and eat it.  

Here's the soup

Emily likes hers topped with some shredded mozzarella cheeses

The soup gets even better leftover. Our adorable niece, Lisa, even enjoyed some of the leftovers!

Toddler Appoved!

Here's the recipe...

Chicken Sausage, vegetable, brown rice pasta soup

(Serves a medium sized army/about 16 bowls or so)

Ingredients
- 36 ounces precooked sweet Italian chicken sausage
- 4 onions
- 1 head of celery
- 10 oz. shredded cabbage
- 10 oz. shredded carrots
- Two 29 oz. cans of whole plum tomatoes, preferable unsalted
- 10 cups chicken broth
- 4 cups dried BROWN RICE fusili pasta
- about 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheeses
- 1 T olive oil
- 3 T salt
- 1 T black pepper
- 1 T dried oregano
- 2 t poultry seasoning
- 1 t dried rosemary
- 2 t garlic powder
- pinch of dried red pepper flakes

Directions
1.  Heat a large soup pot, at least 8 quarts, over medium heat.
2. Chop the sausage into 1/4" fullmoons. Saute in 1T olive oil until lightly browned, about 5 minutes
3. While sausages cook, dice 4 onions. Add them to the browned sausage and cook for another 5 minutes until onions become translucent.
4. Dice the celery. Add the diced celery, shredded cabbage, and shredded carrots. Cook another 5 minutes.
5. Add both cans of plum tomatoes.
6. Add all the spices.
6. Add the chicken broth. Taste. Add more salt or pepper to taste.
7. Turn heat to high and bring the whole pot to a boil.
8. Add the brown rice pasta. Turn heat to a low simmer. Cook pasta in soup according to package directions, or about 12 minutes.
9. Ladle that soup into a bowl, top with some shredded mozzarella if you want.
10. Enjoy!


Footnotes: 

*It's surprisingly hard to find chicken sausage without pork casing, and I can't understand why. Presumably, a decent percentage of people choosing Chicken (as opposed to pork) sausage are doing so to avoid pork. So, why do most Chicken Sausage offerings come in pork casing? Why not just make that thing all chicken? It's like a restaurant selling a vegetarian pasta option and sprinkling bacon on top. Sure it'd be delicious, but it would not be what a vegetarian was looking for.

**Listen, I know it's cheaper to buy some cabbage and shred it up yourself, but it's only like 50 cents cheaper at TJ's. I've been up since 5:15am, worked from 7am - 5pm, it's my birthday, and I also biked 30 miles, I'm hungry, and I'd like to leer at my wife while she does yoga. I'll pay Trader Joe 50 cents to shred my cabbage at this point.

***Don't stress if you're missing some of these. I use them because they're what is on our spice rack, not for any special, cheffy reason. Make sure you use salt and pepper, but past that, feel free to add whatever spices make sense and aren't too expensive.