Chorizo Kale Soup

I know it’s still summer, guys, but I like soup. I like soup all the time– year round. I especially like soup that only uses one pot, like this chorizo kale soup.

Image from PaleoPot.com

This is because I am a lazy shitbag. Hey, I embrace that about myself. One pot = fewer dishes = happy lazy shitbag. Additionally, this recipe is kind of super easy. The hardest part is chopping things. I’m not making fun if you can’t chop things though, guys. God knows I have chopped my share of digits along with the peppers and onions, but I managed to make this one blood-free.

Chorizo is a kind of Mexican spicy sausage. You can find it in the grocery store next to the brats and hotdogs usually. It’s the sort of thing that Bobby Flay and Alton Brown jizz themselves over. Basically, it’s just a spicy bratwurst. Sometimes you can find it ground, too, but I got the link kind and then chopped it up.

I threw it in the pot and cooked it a bit.

I was supposed to be multitasking here by cooking the chorizo while at the same time chopping vegetables, but I was deathly afraid that the chorizo was going to stick to the stainless steel pot and then it would be a giant mess and everybody would be totally pissed at me (and by everybody I mostly mean myself because no one really cares but me). So I cooked it a little bit and then took it off the heat and chopped vegetables, and then added the vegetables and cooked everything a little bit more. Efficient? No. But hey, it worked.

I also had to be muy muy careful about chopping these veggies because they included a single, tiny habanero pepper that my brother brought me from one of his coworkers’ yards. He warned me about it. And then he told me stories about dudes cutting up habaneros, neglecting to wash their hands, and then going to take a leak and having fiery pepper penis. (If it was a cautionary tale, it sort of missed the intended audience, as I have no penis.)

Once the veggies were cooking, I added the liquid ingredients, which were some chicken stock and coconut milk, I think. Paleo people fucking love coconut milk, guys. Probably because it’s the equivalent of heavy cream. In a few years, we’ll find out it’s an endocrine disruptor or causes eyeball cancer or something, but for now, everyone’s eating it like it’s the food that cures all.

Know what else paleo people love? Kale. Kale all day long. Kale for everyone! This one I can’t figure out, because kale is some nasty-ass shit. I guess maybe people just like it because it’s good for you or something, but that seems like a suck reason to me. Anyway, you pile a bunch of kale over top of the soup, close the lid, and let it cook for a while.

Everyone who tried this before me told me it was delicious. They swore it was amazing. They insisted I would love it. I was skeptical. It seemed too easy. And it has kale. But people, it was really damn delicious.

A word of caution: habanero peppers are maybe not the brightest idea. My husband is a Southern gentleman and not really used to spicy food. He loved it, but he spent all of dinner sucking air through his lips and making distressed noises and blowing his nose. I shared the leftovers with my brother (procurer of habanero pepper) and we both thought it was really spicy too, even having grown up with some spicy-ass food. So maybe skip the habanero pepper and just use jalapenos and other ones you know you like.