Garlicky, full of leafy greens, sweet tomatoes, and spicy plant-based sausage, this cozy soup is a hearty, protein-rich meal-in-a-bowl. Perfect for an easy weeknight dinner! If you're feeding a mixed group, you can use different types of sausage, cooked separately, and add in before serving. 

Ingredients

White Beans

White beans are mildly flavoured and creamy when cooked. They should be readily available in dried or canned form in North American supermarkets. You might also see them labelled as cannellini, white kidney beans, or fazolia. We used canned (cooked) beans for this recipe, but you can cook them from dry. If you’re cooking from scratch, remember to factor in the time needed to soak the beans.

We haven’t tested this tip from Healthline, but it sounds like a timesaver: “If you’re using dry beans, you should soak them in water for approximately 6–8 hours before cooking. For a quick alternative, boil them for 2 minutes, cover them with a lid, and let them sit for about 1 hour.”

Leafy Greens

We’ve made this multiple times with different leafy greens, including spinach, chard and baby kale. The amount of leafy greens you use is totally flexible, we like about 6 or 8 big handfuls thrown in ours, but more or less would work too.

Tomatoes

We used about 2 cups of cherry tomatoes. You can use any kind of tomato, even canned diced tomatoes would do in a pinch. Again the quantity is flexible, if you have more or less, the soup will still be tasty.

Vegetable Broth

We used a store-bought, salted broth. If you have unsalted, you’ll likely need to add salt to the recipe. Taste as you go and add salt as needed.

Pasta

Choose whatever type of pasta you like. We used colourful macaroni but fusilli or farfalle would work here, too. You can also use gluten-free pasta alternatives — just check the label for cook time and considering adding the pasta just a few minutes before serving, because unlike wheat pasta it might not hold its shape in the hot liquid for much time. Finally, you could leave the pasta out entirely if you like, the soup is hearty enough on its own without it.

Onion

We used a sweet onion for this recipe, but regular white onion would be fine as well.

Garlic

This is garlicky soup so the garlic you choose is important. Local garlic is ideal, but wherever it’s from, make sure the skin is unbroken and firm but not dry. The more intense the garlic smells the more intense the flavour will be. If you’re having trouble finding good fresh garlic, you can boost the garlic flavour with dried garlic.

Plant-Based Sausage 

We used two links of Beyond Meat Spicy Sausage for our soup. Feel free to use your favourite brand of plant-based sausage, or regular sausage if you’re a meat-eater. We’ve used Beyond Meat in a number of recipes now: Beyond Meat Shepherd’s Pie, Beyond Meat Meatballs, Beyond Meat Taco Salad, and our Beyond Meat Grazing Platter. It cooks very much like meat, although maybe a little faster, so if you’re new to cooking with Beyond Meat, you won’t find it much of a learning curve.

Process

This soup comes together pretty easily. Start by sauteing the onion in oil. Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes. Next you’ll add in about one cup of the beans and one cup of the veggie broth. We like to use a potato masher to mash the beans into the broth. This is optional but makes a soup a bit thicker. Let that cook for a few minutes, then you add in the remaining beans and broth, along with leafy greens, tomato, and cooked pasta. Let this simmer for about 30 minutes. Near the end of the cooking time, fry the vegan sausage in a small pan. Once cooked, add it to the soup and serve.

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