Italian Sausage, White Bean and Dandelion Soup

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A rustic Italian soup with white beans, vegetables, fennel sausage and dandelion greens or other bitter greens. A template to make your own.

Prep Time15

Cook Time45

Total Time1

Course: Soup

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: Servings

Calories: 601kcal

Cost: 5

If using dried beans, soak them overnight in cold water, drain, then put in a small saucepot, cover with water by two inches, add the bay, onion and a generous pinch of salt. Bring the pot to a boil, turn the heat to a simmer and cook until the beans are just tender, about 45-60 minutes.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil large enough to accommodate the dandelions, 2-3 quarts is good. Line the dandelion greens up and cut them into 1 inch strips so they’ll fit on a spoon.
Add the dandelion greens to the pot and cook until just wilted, about 30 seconds. Remove the greens, refresh in cold water, squeeze dry and reserve.

First brown the sausage in a soup pot of at least 1 gallon capacity. You can use lump sausage or links. While most recipes won’t call for it, par-cooking the sausage before browning will give you a better fond or crust on the bottom than if you cook the sausage from raw as some water weight has been removed.
If using links, brown them well until cooked through, then remove, cool, quarter the long way and cut into bite-sized pieces. Remove the sausage from the pan using a slotted spoon or spatula, leaving the drippings behind.
Sweat the carrot, onion and celery in the sausage drippings until very well cooked, about twenty minutes. Add the tomato paste and continue cooking until it starts to brown on the bottom, but be careful not to burn it.
At the perfect moment when the color on the bottom of the pot starts to make you nervous, add the wine, cook until the pan is dry, then add the stock, dried mushrooms if using, beans and sausage, bring the pot to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.
If you’re at all wary of the cleanliness of your mushrooms, soak them in a cup of warm water first, agitating to remove grit, straining and recombining the two. If you soak the mushrooms, add the soaking liquid to the soup.

Finally, add the dandelion greens and cook until they’re tender and taste good to you, this will take roughly 5-10 minutes depending on the age of the greens.
Double check the seasoning for salt and pepper, adjust until it tastes good to you, and serve. While you can serve it right away, the flavor improves greatly if the soup is allowed to rest overnight.

Instead of beans, you can substitute 2 cups of small diced potatoes, just try not to cook them to mush.
Instead of sausage you can substitute 8 oz of fresh mushrooms, roasted or sauteed to brown them first.
To make it a more filling meal or help it appeal to children and skeptics, you can enrich the soup with a few handfuls of cooked, tiny pasta like acini de pepe, ditalini, or farfallini.