Get the App

Recipes

Find a Recipe Blue Ribbon Recipes Pinch It!™ Feed Browse All Recipes

Editorial

Food Bites & Articles Videos What is a Blue Ribbon? Meet the Test Kitchen

Community

Member Recipes Groups Sweepstakes Contests Shopping

caldo verde (portuguese kale soup)

(1 rating)
NakedMaggie avatar
Recipe by
Maggie May Schill
@NakedMaggie
Jacksonville, FL

The simple kale and sausage soup is something I grew up on. We simply just called it Portuguese soup, even though that is really non-specific. In fact the Portuguese culture has a great variety of soups and stews in the mix. The kale soup I grew up on featured chouriço (pronounced: sir-reese); the Portuguese version of the Spanish Chorico sausage, and linguiça (pronounced: li-gwee-sa) a lean and aromatic cured Portuguese sausage. The recipe I'm presenting has both, because my mother often made it with both. She also would sometimes add Chuck beef chunks to the soup, which I choose not to include, because frankly the sausage is enough meat for me. This is a soup that generations of people in my family (my mother's side) and in my home town have lived off of. It is a rich, slightly spicy and hearty soup. This particular soup I made took between 5-6 hours to produce. It was decently hard to find linguica and chourico here in Jacksonville, over 900 miles south of my native Fall River, MA, where these ingredients are so common. In this case Whole Foods was my savior... its like they have everything! So here's to childhood memories... and my best attempt at it.

(1 rating)
yield 12 serving(s)
prep time 30 Min
cook time 6 Hr
method Stove Top

Ingredients For caldo verde (portuguese kale soup)

  • 2
    8 inch linguica links
  • 2
    8 inch chourico links
  • 4 Tbsp
    light cooking oil
  • 5 c
    beef broth
  • 4 clove
    garlic, minced
  • 1 sm
    yellow onion, minced
  • 7 c
    fresh kale, chopped and rinsed
  • 3 c
    dried navy beans
  • 5 c
    potatoes, peeled and cubed
  • 4 c
    warm water
  • 1/4 tsp
    red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp
    marjoram, dried
  • 3
    bayleaves, whole
  • 3/4 tsp
    paprika, sweet mild
  • salt and pepper to taste

How To Make caldo verde (portuguese kale soup)

  • 1
    1-In a small sauce pan bring your navy beans to a boil in 6 cups of water. Once it hits a boil, let sit off of heat in the water for 1 hour. 2-Drain from water and set navy beans aside. 3-In a large dutch oven or cooking pot, add light oil and heat through on medium high. 4-Once oil is at smoking temperature add linguica and chourico. Brown them on all sides with the pan covered. 5-Once sausages are browned completely, remove from heat and de-glaze your pan with the drippings left behind from the sausages. Set sausages aside. 6-Add your garlic and onions to the pan. Cook with pan covered. 7-Once garlic and onion are translucent, add in your broth. 8-Add bay leafs to broth. Simmer for 30 minutes. Bring to a boil and add your navy beans. Bring back to simmer for 1 hour. 9-Add salt, pepper, marjoram, red pepper flakes, and paprika. Continue to simmer for another half hour. 10-Add warm water. 11-Add kale to your broth and simmer for 2 hours. 12-Slice your sausages up into half inch pieces. Add them to the soup. 13-Add potatoes to the soup. Continue to simmer until potatoes are tender and kale is wilted completely. This could take another 1 or 2 hours. 14-Lower heat and let soup sit on low for about an hour before serving. (Letting it come down from simmer slow like this before serving really brings all the flavors out and lets them develop nice.)
  • Last Step: Don't forget to share! Make all your friends drool by posting a picture of your finished recipe on your favorite social network. And don't forget to tag Just A Pinch and include #justapinchrecipes so we can see it too!
ADVERTISEMENT