Sausage and Spinach Soup

We found this recipe online when looking for some tasty soups.  This soup cooks up pretty quick and it's filling, too.  We've used Italian turkey sausage,mild and hot Italian sausage and recently chorizo.  The recipe suggests 10 oz, but this can obviously be varied to meet your needs / tastes.  We avoid the encased sausage when we can - the cases are hard to remove and typically just make a mess.  And the non-encased sausage typically crumbles better.

We use fresh garlic, also, not the bottled minced kind in the recipe.  Interestingly, we don't typically have fresh basil or oregano in the house - especially during the winter, when we typically eat soups - so we use the dried versions and reduce the quantities somewhat.  We DO typically have fresh cheese to grate.

Fresh spinach is must - the frozen stuff, just doesn't cut it.  Not much else to say about that.

We don't typically drink wine with this, but the recipe we found recommends a "crisp, medium-bodied" wine, such as a California pino grigio.  We would recommend a beer...OK, Mike would recommend a beer...something crisp and medium-bodied, like a Dortmunder Gold from Great Lakes Brewery or Sam Adams Boston Lager.

Sausage and spinach soup served with a toasted baguette.

10 oz. sweet turkey Italian sausage
cooking spray
1 cup pre-chopped onion
2 teaspoons (bottled) minced garlic
1/2 cup water
1 (15 oz) can cannelloni beans, rinsed and drained
1 (14.5 oz) can organic stewed tomatoes, undrained
1 (14 oz) can fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
2 cups baby spinach
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano
grated fresh Romano cheese

Remove casings from sausage.  Cook sausage in a large saucepan (think soup pot) coated with cooking spray over high heat until browned, stirring to crumble.  Add onion and 2 teaspoons garlic to pan; cook for 2 minutes.  Stir in 1/2 cup water, beans, tomatoes, and broth.  Cover and bring to a boil.  Uncover and cook for 3 minutes or until slightly thick.  Remove from heat, and stir in spinach, basil and oregano.  Ladle soup into bowls (typically makes 4 bowls) and sprinkle each serving with cheese.

This soup is delicious.  And we can usually get a few helpings of leftovers out of it, too.