When I told my husband last week that we are cooking a kale soup, he looked at me like it was the weirdest thing to make a soup from. As he found out later, it’s delightful.
Kale soup is one of the traditional meals in Slovakia. There are plenty of variations depending on the part of the country or family recipe. The soup consists of kale — surprising, isn’t it — potatoes, seasonings, and sausage. The sausage is optional, some people in Slovakia don’t use it in the kale soup at all. In my opinion, it gives the soup a wonderful deep flavor, one that only smoked sausage can deliver. However, if you are a vegetarian or vegan, a bit of smoked paprika seasoning will help replace the smoky essence.
Warming Kale Soup

Equipment
- 1 medium-size pot
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- ½ large chopped sweet onion
- 1 tbsp minced garlic
- 14 oz Polska kielbasa sausage rope, chopped, one packaging
- 4 large chopped yellow potatoes
- 6 cups water
- 1 vegetable bouillon cube
- 1 bunch of kale, chopped
- 1 tbsp caraway seeds
- 2 bay leaves
- ¼ tsp ground black pepper
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Heat up one tablespoon of olive oil in the pot.
- Add chopped onion and saute for two minutes. Throw in the minced garlic as well.
- Sprinkle the onion-garlic mixture with one tablespoon of caraway seeds and saute for another minute while stirring occasionally.
- Sausage in the pothole time! Blend the chopped sausage with the other good stuff in the pot. Mix them ingredients, allow the sausage to soften.
- When all things spoke the potato said, 'set me warm, dig me warm, eat me warm, that's all I want.' So those four large chopped potatoes want to go in the pot as well to meet their friends.
- Add six cups of water and bring the soup to boil.
- When the water is boiling, add ¼ teaspoon of ground black pepper, 2 bay leaves, and chopped kale.
- Add salt to taste. Cook until the potatoes are soft, about 25 minutes.