LIA COOPER

Lia’s Hearty Kale & Bulgar Winter Soup

Ingredients

1 large onion (white, yellow, sweet, anything but red)
4-5 cloves fresh garlic
1 Carrot
1 Sweet Potato
1 Parsnip
1 Potato (medium size, yellow)
5 kale leaves (thick stiff dark green variety or however much you want)
1 cup bulgur wheat
1 can cannellini beans
2 tbs butter
~2 tbs olive oil
4 cups stock (veggie or chicken)
4 cups water
1 tsp dried Italian Seasoning
1 tsp dried parsley
Salt to taste
Black pepper
½ tsp red chili flake

Instructions

Melt butter and heat olive oil in a soup pot or dutch oven. Dice onion and garlic. Cook onion on medium heat until translucent (do not burn or color too darkly), add garlic and continue cooking being careful not to burn the garlic. Chop the rest of the veggies (carrots, sweet potato, parsnip, and potato) into medium size chunks.

Once the onions are nice and soft add the veggies except the regular potatoes and continue cooking for 5-6 minutes. Add in the regular potatoes and cook for another minute.

Add water and stock and bring to a simmer. At this point add the Italian seasoning and parsley (you can add a bit more than 1 tsp of each, I just eyed it based on personal preference. Fresh parsley would have also been nice in this recipe). Once simmering reduce heat to medium or medium low, cover and cook the veggies for 20-25 minutes.

Clean and de-rib the kale (pull the leafy portion off the stiff center core, discard cores). Roughly chop to personal preference.

After 25 minutes max, stir everything to make sure its not sticking to the bottom, pour in the bulgur wheat (pearled barley would also make a nice substitute if you have that. Farrow might also be good though I haven’t tried it with that), add the chopped kale, and gentle stir in the drained can of beans. Reduce heat to medium low so that it’s still simmering but not to hot, cover and cook per your grain’s directions. For bulgur wheat i cooked it 12 minutes covered.

Give everything a nice stir, make sure nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pan, add the red pepper flake, fresh ground pepper (to taste, i probably put in 2-3 tsp of black pepper) and salt (to taste, I honestly don’t know how much i added here but don’t be too afraid of salt, it brings out all the flavors.).

You’re done, hearty winter soup ready to go!

If you use pearled barley that requires longer cooking time, for example 30 minutes to cook, go ahead and add it into the soup at the beginning when you add the stock and cook everything until it’s done OR cook the barley/grains separately and then add them after you’ve cooked the kale. 12 minutes in the pot was plenty of time to cook the kale and make it nice and chewy without being soggy or too stiff.

Makes 5-6 servings. Serve with crusty bread.