Slow cooker lentil and sausage soup
Browned Italian sausage and lentils simmer all day in a tomatoey broth, then get a handful of spinach and parmesan, filling, cheap and big on flavor.
- 520 min total
- 20 min hands-on
- Anyone can make this
- Serves 6
- About $1.95 a serving
- 480 calories
- Good the next day
Dolly says: Make the full amount. It’s just as good for lunch the next day.
Ingredients
For 6 servings.
- 1 lb Italian sausage, casings removed
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- 2 carrots, diced
- 2 stalks celery, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1½ cups lentils, brown or green, rinsed
- 1 can diced tomatoes, with the juice
- 3 chicken bouillon cubes, check the box: most cubes make 2 cups each
- 3 cups baby spinach
- ¼ cup grated parmesan (optional)
From your pantry
- 6 cups water
- 2 tsp Italian seasoning
- 2 bay leaves
Each serving has about 480 calories, 25 g protein, 41 g carbs and 25 g fat, and costs about $1.95 at typical US grocery prices. Both are estimates from what the recipe uses.
Missing something?
- No yellow onions? White onions or red onions work.
- No diced tomatoes? Crushed tomatoes work.
- No baby spinach? Kale or arugula works.
- No grated parmesan? Parmesan wedge works.
Steps
Tap an underlined word for a quick explanation.
Cook the sausage in a large over medium-high heat, breaking it into , until with no pink left, 8 to 10 minutes.
Skillet. A skillet is a frying pan: wide and flat with low, sloped sides. The shape lets steam escape, so food browns instead of stewing.
How you’ll know: It’s the pan you’d fry an egg in, and a 10 or 12 inch one handles most recipes.
Crumble. Crumbling means breaking food into small, rough bits with your fingers or a spoon, like feta or ground meat in the pan. Small bits spread through the dish, so there’s some in every bite.
How you’ll know: The pieces are small and uneven, about pea-size, with no big clumps left.
Brown. Browning means cooking until the outside turns brown, which is where a lot of savory flavor comes from. Give food room and time without stirring, or it steams and stays gray.
How you’ll know: The food looks brown rather than gray, and the kitchen smells toasty and savory.
Medium-high heatTimer: 9 min
Food safety: Raw pork sausage is done at 160°F and raw chicken or turkey sausage at 165°F. Precooked sausage just needs heating until hot all the way through.
While it browns, the onion, carrots and celery, the garlic, and the lentils and pick out any tiny stones.
Dice. Dicing means cutting food into small, even cubes, usually a quarter to half an inch across. Pieces the same size cook at the same speed, so nothing burns while the rest catches up.
How you’ll know: Your pieces are little cubes about the size of a chickpea, and they all look close to the same.
Mince. Mincing means chopping something into the tiniest pieces you can, smaller than a grain of rice. Tiny pieces melt into the dish, so you get the flavor without biting into a chunk of garlic.
How you’ll know: Every piece is tiny and about the same size, and the pile starts to look almost like a paste.
Rinse. Rinsing means running cold water over rice or canned beans in a strainer while you swish them around. It washes off loose starch and can liquid, so rice cooks up fluffy and beans taste clean.
How you’ll know: The water running out goes from cloudy to mostly clear; it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Scoop the sausage into the slow cooker, leaving the fat behind, and add the vegetables, garlic, lentils, tomatoes, water, bouillon cubes, Italian seasoning and bay leaves.
Cover and cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours or HIGH for 4 hours, until the lentils are soft.
Timer: 450 min
Pull out the bay leaves and stir in the spinach until it .
Wilt. Wilting means cooking leafy greens just until they go soft and collapse. Greens shrink a lot, so a big pile of spinach becomes a small handful, and that’s normal.
How you’ll know: The leaves turn soft and deep green and slump into the pan, usually within a minute or two.
Taste for salt and serve with parmesan on top.
Dolly’s tip: Lentils thicken the soup as it sits. Add a splash of water to leftovers when you reheat them.
Plan this in Dollop, and get the grocery list
Dollop puts this dinner on a night that suits your week, lists only what you still need to buy, and walks you through each step while you cook.
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