For the days when your stomach needs a break from heavy food.

New year, new recipe! This one is one of my favourite options for light veggie days when you just need a break from all the heavy food, usually after the holidays or my birthday. I’ve been making variations of it ever since I’d moved out on my own, so I figured I should finally write down an approximate recipe.

Kale soup recipe

Ingredients

• about 1kg (2 lbs) of kale/Savoy cabbage*
• 1 head of garlic
• 1 turnip
• 4 potatoes
• 1 yellow onion
• 200 ml (1 cup) of cooking cream
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 tablespoon of marjoram
• 2 bay leaves
• water/vegetable soup stock
• salt and lots of ground black pepper

For 3 – 4 servings

Prep time: 10-15 min

Cooking time: 20-30 min

Instructions

Peel and chop the garlic cloves, onion and turnip. Heat a tablespoon of butter and olive oil in your pan and cook the garlic, turnip and onion until they turn softer, but not browned.

Remove the hard stems and chop your kale/Savoy cabbage into coarse pieces and add them in the pot. Add salt, cook for a bit longer until the kale starts to soften and stir occasionally to prevent the vegetables from burning.

Add several cups of water/vegetable soup stock, the cooking cream, ground black pepper, bay leaves and marjoram and wait for it to boil. In the meantime, peel and chop the potatoes into small cubes, then toss them into the pot as well.

Leave it to boil and cook for about 20-30 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked and the kale is the right texture and softness for you. I like my kale a bit tender-crisp, not mushy, so I usually don’t cook it very long.

Notes

This kale soup is quite heavy on the garlic, so if you’re not a fan of garlic you can of course use less or substitute it with more onion or leek. The recipe feeds about 3-4 people, but it’s not meant to be super filling or very creamy, so if you’re very hungry you can either increase the potato ratio and add extra cream, or eat it with a slice of buttered bread. 🙂

*The kale/Savoy cabbage dilemma: I’ve mentioned this in several posts already, but in Slovenia we use a type of dark green, curly-headed cabbage, which we kind of call kale in translation, but is called Savoy cabbage in English. It tastes very similar to kale, a sort of earthy, mild and very green taste that feels very healthy and works great with potatoes. So, you can use either Savoy cabbage or kale for this soup and other dishes, while regular cabbage just won’t have the same effect.

P.S.: The pink place mat on the cover photo has a story, which is very dear to my heart. The handmade part was embroidered on by my grandmother, who passed away in August 2019 while I was travelling in Scandinavia. I inherited all her embroidery supplies and figured I’d pick up her craft, so the flowers on this place mat were the first thing I’d embroidered since she had taught me how to do it as a child. 🙂

Download printable PDF here