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Low-Carb Pumpkin Sausage Soup
Lucky Bonus Low Carb Soup Recipe!
Happy Halloweeny Everyone!
It’s Time To Take the Chill Outta Ya With Warm Fall Fixins’!
We sorta gave you the heads up that a “hey y’all, watch this” moment was about to occur and hope you were prepared! This is a bonus edition of Budget Low Carb Cooking or Feed 4 Under $10!
In honor of Halloween, we wanted to bring you one more festive low carb soup recipe idea to get your low carb brains thinkin’ creatively. In Part I, you learned how to make Guts ‘N’ Worms and not-so-spooky Monster Claws with Spicy Apricot Hot Mustard Dipping Sauce. Now you will learn the “secret” of the Fluffy Chix Cook Pumpkin Sausage Soup recipe in festive Oven Roasted Jack O’ Lanterns.
Even though we don’t have a very big fall, and Winter doesn’t really start until January, we cleave to those hearty and comforting chilis, soups, and stews of our youth.
You may be familiar with low carb pumpkin sausage soup. Pumpkin sausage soup screams fall at the top of its lungs and is so warm and filling – a perfect comfort food. If you’ve been low carb for any length of time, there is a recipe floating around on the internet that you either love or hate. The recipe for pumpkin sausage soup uses ground breakfast sausage and canned pumpkin, along with Italian Seasoning. Sounds like cockamamie ingredients if you ask me, but I’m a member of the camp who loves that soup. And since I can’t sit still, or keep myself from tweakin’ things, I came up with this little spin on the low carb pumpkin sausage soup classic. I hope you’ll try it. It actually reminds me of the rich, comforting feeling I used to get from eating a thick bowl of split pea soup with ham hocks. Deeeeee-licious!
PrintLow-Carb Pumpkin Sausage Soup
This hearty one dish meal tastes great on its own and freezes great. It’s a perfect fall or winter weeknight meal. Recipe splits well and can even be doubled to feed a crowd.
The optional garnish adds only pennies per bowl and taste delicious with low carb Pumpkin Sausage Soup.
- Prep Time: 20 min
- Cook Time: 85 min
- Total Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
- Yield: 16 cups 1x
- Diet: Diabetic
Ingredients
Soup Ingredients
- 1 3/4 pounds smoked turkey leg – about 13 ounces of meat or 2 2/3 cup
- 8 cups water – filtered
- 2 bay leaf, whole
- 1 cup onion – split, chopped (about 5.6oz)
- 1 cup mushrooms – chopped fine
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 pound sausage, breakfast, pork, pan, hot, raw
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1/4 cup dry vermouth – or dry white wine, or omit and add more water or broth
- 2 teaspoons parsley, freeze-dried
- 2 teaspoons basil, dried
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano
- 1/4 teaspoon thyme, dried
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1/8 teaspoon rosemary – or 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper – freshly ground
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes https://amzn.to/3Q25vLK
- 44 fluid ounces pumpkin, canned, custom – 1-15 oz can and 1-29 oz can
- 1 cup cream, heavy, liquid – 1 tablespoon per cup
Garnish for 4 Servings – optional
- 2 tablespoon parmesan cheese – grated
- 2 slice bacon – cooked, drained and crumbled
- 2 tablespoon pumpkin seeds, roasted
Instructions
For Soup
- In heavy soup pan or Dutch oven, bring 6 cups water to a boil. Chop onion and add ½ cup onion to boiling water. Add bay leaf and turkey leg. Reduce heat to a slow simmer. Cover and cook 1 hour.
- While turkey broth is cooking, wash and coarsely chop mushrooms into pieces.
- Crumble and brown breakfast sausage in a large skillet. When sausage begins to brown, remove from pan. Drain all but 1 tablespoon of sausage grease from sauté pan. Add remaining half of the onion to the pan. Peel and thinly slice garlic. Add garlic, mushrooms, herbs, and spices, and whole sprig of rosemary to the sauteing onions. Saute until onions are translucent and mushrooms are tender. Add vegetables and rosemary to the soup pot.
- De-glaze sauté pan with dry vermouth or dry white wine and scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. These add flavor to the soup. (I do not use a non-stick pan for this sauté, because we want to build up a browned surface on the bottom of the pan, called fond, but if that’s all you have, it will be fine.)
- When the turkey leg has finished simmering, remove leg from soup pan. You now have a rich smoked turkey stock. Add the browned meat mixture to the soup pot along with sautéed vegetables and herbs. Add chicken stock and bring soup to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and allow soup to simmer about 20 minutes. Add pumpkin puree (this is canned pumpkin, not pumpkin pie filling). Stir to combine. Cover and let simmer an additional 20 minutes.
- Add cream and serve.
- Ladle cooked soup into bowls and garnish with Parmesan, crumbled bacon and toasted pumpkin seeds.
For Optional Garnish
- Chop bacon and fry in small sauté pan until crisp. Drain and reserve for soup.
- Shave or grate Parmesan and reserve.
- Add a sprinkling of toasted pumpkin seeds and enjoy! It’s Halloween in a bowl, perfect for that pre-trick-or-treating meal!
Notes
This low carb soup recipe makes quite a large amount of soup. I’ve split it in half for you with this recipe and it still makes 16 cups of soup! It could be split further, but it’s hard to split a turkey leg. You could substitute smoked turkey breast or even smoked sausage or smoked ham hocks. I especially love using smoked sausage links and cutting the sausage into rounds. That way, you get to eat sausage two ways! When I use smoked sausage in conjunction with the breakfast sausage I still throw in a smoked neck bone or two in order to get that smoky, deep flavor in the broth.
Serving Ideas: Serve with sliced tomatoes or a simple mixed greens salad with house vinaigrette, and if you feel industrious, try Parmesan crusted cheese stuffed rolls. This soup is also great when served in mini Roasted Jack O’ Lanterns (recipe follows).
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1½ cups
- Calories: 419
- Sodium: 1335mg
- Fat: 26g
- Carbohydrates: 14g (Net Carbs 8g)
- Fiber: 6g
- Protein: 34g
- Cholesterol: 124mg
Since the soup is fairly involved, I make one huge batch at the beginning of fall, and portion and freeze it for later. That way, we have this delicious pumpkin sausage soup in the freezer, ready to go for quick weeknight meals. If you lack freezer space, feel free to cut the recipe in half.
Don’t forget! For the purposes of our Feed 4 Under $10 menu, we will assume this recipe will yield a second meal plus leftovers.
The garnish is not included in the cost of the recipe or in the nutritional information. This soup tastes awesome on its own without any garnish and is a great stand-alone meal. But make the garnish for a complete BOMB! It’s TLF (To Live For) Delicious!
Go crazy for Halloween and make Fluffy Chix Cook darling individual roasted jack o’ lantern punkins and serve the soup in the punkins!
Low-Carb Roasted Jack O’ Lantern Pumpkins
‘More Low-Carb Recipes & Articles by Susie T. Gibbs
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