Thursday, November 3, 2011

Sausage, Potato and White Bean Soup

We went to Olive Garden the other night with family, and one of us (not me) ordered a soup that had (I think) sausage, potatoes and white beans in it. That just sounds like a good combination to me, so even though I didn't actually taste it I wanted to try to recreate it at home. Yes, I know this doesn't exactly make sense. So when Wal-mart had Cream of Mushroom soup (not low sodium or low fat, unfortunately) on sale for 60 cents and I was in the mood for soup, I figured I'd give it a try.

Of course, the obvious choice is the crockpot:
2 cans Cream of Mushroom soup
2 cans of water
2 1/2 cups of almost fat free lower sodium chicken broth
1 pound sausage, browned
about 5 potatoes, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1-2 tablespoons minced garlic (I tend to dump a big spoonful in, so really I have no idea how much)
1 can white/Great Northern beans (or frozen precooked in my case)
salt and pepper to taste, heavy on the pepper here
A couple shakes Italian dried herbs mix
Combine and cook until potatoes are done. Mine cooked for about 5 1/2 hours total, with maybe 1 hour of that on high because my beans were still frozen.

Add in the last 20 minutes of cook time:
2 c. frozen peas

Nutrition Data tells me that a 2 1/2 cup serving (that amount includes seconds, really) comes in at 318 calories. Using low sodium and low fat mushroom soup would have been much better, but for a "cream" soup I think that's a pretty good number. It's not as thick as a chowder, but it's still creamy.

Does it taste like Olive Garden's soup? I have no idea, but I am very pleased with how it turned out.

2 comments:

  1. I put this in the crock pot for our Sunday dinner and we both really liked it! It seems to be very similar to the Oliver Garden version. Thanks for posting it.

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  2. I'm glad you liked it! Nothing fancy and very easy, but we liked it here.

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