When fall weather comes to Texas, one of my favorite things to cook is soup. Really there are typically four or five months of the year where one COULD want soup here. So it is imperative that ones avails themselves of soup weather. Most of the time I’d make something like cream of mushroom or cream of broccoli soup because I find these super easy to make. I also like to make New England style chowder with cream potatoes and seafood. Tonight I was craving something creamy but also with a bit of spice. I ended up deciding on a recipe for sausage potato soup.
Potato and sausage soup isn’t really a new thing for me to make. I often make a kale, potato, Italian sausage soup. However, that has a clear chicken broth base and usually takes sweet Italian sausage. In contrast, this soup is cream based and take spicy sausage. They recommend and I used andouille.
For those of you not familiar with andouille it is a spicy smoked cajun sausage made of pork, which came to Louisiana from France. It is often gets used in jambalaya, gumbo or other cajun dishes. Given that I live in easy driving distance of Louisiana, andouille is quite easy to find locally. If it isn’t something you can get easily I’d suggest trying another smoked sausage that is slightly spicy. Kielbasa which is spicy or not will work in a pinch. I mostly made the recipe as written. However I made two changes
First, I altered how I prepared the potatoes. One of my pet peeves with chowders is when the potatoes completely turn to mush or starch up the soup. To prevent this I typically season and pre-roast my potatoes with the skins on before I put them in the soup. This reduces the cook time of the potatoes in the soup and eliminates any mushy texture. If you aren’t a fan of roasted potatoes or potato skins, I STRONGLY suggest you peel your potatoes, dice into bite sized pieces, pre-cook them and add at the last minute. This will save you standing over the chowder repeatedly checking their doneness to prevent mushy potatoes.
Second, I decided the soup needed a little color or greenery. I’d like to have put kale in it. However, I didn’t have this on hand so I diced bok choy and added the leafy part instead. The overall final product was very tasty and had a nice appearance as well. I’d definitely make it again potentially substituting kielbasa if I served it for spice sensitive guests
