The Glade 4.0

This Portuguese soup is one of my favorites. It's hearty, spicy, meaty, and delicious.

Note - There are lots of kinds of chorizo out there. For this recipe you want to use a Portuguese style, it's a fatty hard link of sausage. Don't get the Mexican kind, it's got the wrong kind of spices in it and has more of the consistency of ground pork inside. Ideally you want something you can break into little meatball-sized chunks. Gaspar's is the brand you can get here in the grocery stores in Florida.

This soup is good fresh, peaks at about day 1 or 2 in the fridge, and lasts about 4-5 days in the fridge total. I haven't tried freezing it but I imagine it would freeze well.

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Caldo Verde

Ingredients:
¾ lb Gaspar’s chorizo
2 medium onions, chopped
4 to 5 cloves of garlic, minced
6 or 7 medium to large potatoes
6 cups chicken stock / chicken broth / water + chicken boullion
1 can of kidney or cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 lb kale
2 Bay Leaves
Olive oil
White wine
Hot sauce
Ground black pepper

Directions:
Remove casing from chorizo and rip it into small bite-sized chunks, ideally between dime-sized and quarter-sized. Brown chorizo in about a tablespoon of olive oil for about 5 minutes in a 6 quart pot. Using a slotted spoon, remove chorizo from the pot to a separate bowl.

Deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine (just enough to get up all the flavor bits). Add another tablespoon of olive oil, and cook the chopped onion and minced garlic for about 10 minutes, until soft.

While the onions and garlic are cooking, peel the potatoes and cut into ½ inch to 1 inch chunks. Once the onions and garlic are ready, add the chicken broth, ¼ tsp pepper, a little bit of hot sauce, the bay leaf, and the potatoes. Simmer the potatoes for about 20 minutes or until they are soft enough to crush with a spoon on the side of the pan.

While the potatoes cook, cut up the kale – remove the center stem, pile up the leaves, and cut them into thin strips. Discard the stems. Once the potatoes are soft enough to mash, add the can of beans. Using your spoon, mash up about half of the potatoes and beans against the side of the pot (leaving enough chunks in the soup) to thicken the broth.

Add the kale, and simmer for about 5 minutes until the kale is dark green. Add the chorizo and another tbsp of olive oil. Simmer for another few minutes until heated through.

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Edit - fixed some wording in the recipe

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I've been looking for a good reciepe for this!

You sir, are a rock star.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

My mother-in-law is Portuguese and she has given her stamp of approval on this recipe, so it's pretty good. If you make it let me know how it turns out!

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