Creamy Chorizo and Brussels Sprouts Soup

He's home.

June 1, 2020. Luis Jr. came home from the Middle East. Nine months. Two hundred and seventy-nine days. He walked through the front door at 3 PM on a Monday in a pandemic, in his uniform, with his bag over his shoulder and his boots dusty from a desert that is not our desert, and Camila screamed and ran to him and he caught her and lifted her and she weighed nothing to him — she weighs nothing to him; she will always weigh nothing to him — and she said, "You're home you're home you're home," and the repetition was the prayer answered, the prayer I have been praying for nine months, the prayer that tastes like tamales and sounds like my daughter's scream and feels like the particular weight of a door closing behind a soldier who is no longer out there but in here, home, safe, mine.

He is thinner. He is tanner. He is older in the eyes — not in years but in the thing that lives behind the eyes, the thing that soldiers bring home, the thing that has no name but that changes the way they look at kitchen tables and clean sheets and the particular luxury of a house where the biggest threat is Camila's singing volume. He looked around the house and he said: "It's the same." I said: "I promised you it would be." He said: "I know. I counted on it." The counting-on-it is the thing. The whole deployment, the whole nine months, the whole desert — he counted on the sameness. He counted on the bakery being the bakery. On the conchas being the conchas. On the kitchen smelling like Rosa. On the table having his chair. On the tortillas being flour. On the chile colorado being red. He counted on the constants, and the constants held, and the holding is what brought him home.

I reheated the tamales. All two hundred. (We didn't eat all two hundred — we ate about fifty; the rest went to his Army friends, to Carmen, to Doña Esperanza, to the neighborhood, because a homecoming is a community event even in a pandemic, and the community eats tamales on the porch instead of at the table, and the porch is the pandemic's table, and the porch is enough.) He ate twelve tamales. Twelve. I counted. A mother counts.

After dinner, after the tamales, after Camila's concert (she sang every song she'd ever written for him, which took forty-five minutes and exhausted the audience but not the performer), after the dishes were done and the house was quiet, Luis Jr. sat on the back porch with me. Just us. And he said: "Mom, I prayed your rosary every night." Rosa's rosary. The one I gave him for his sixteenth birthday. He prayed it every night in a desert halfway around the world, and the beads are worn smoother now, the way Rosa's beads were worn smooth, and the wearing is the proof of the praying, and the praying is the proof of the faith, and the faith is the proof that the chain holds — Rosa to me to Luis Jr., three generations of hands on the same beads, the same prayers, the same holding-on.

The tamales were the homecoming — the big, loud, porch-filling celebration that Luis Jr. deserved. But the next morning, when Camila was still asleep and it was just him and me at the kitchen table with coffee, I wanted something warm and quiet that was still ours, still flavored with the things he’d counted on. I had Mexican chorizo in the refrigerator — I always have chorizo; that is not something that changes — and I made this soup, and he ate two bowls, and the eating of the second bowl was the truest proof I had that he was really, finally home.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

12 oz Mexican chorizo, casings removed
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cubed (about 1/2-inch pieces)
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup heavy cream
1 can (14.5 oz) diced fire-roasted tomatoes, drained
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
Fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for garnish
Crusty bread or warm flour tortillas, for serving

Instructions

Brown the chorizo. Heat olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the chorizo and cook, breaking it apart with a wooden spoon, until browned and cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the chorizo to a paper-towel-lined plate, leaving the rendered drippings in the pot.
Soften the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add the diced onion to the pot and cook in the chorizo drippings until softened and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, smoked paprika, and cumin and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute until fragrant.
Build the base. Add the diced potatoes and the drained fire-roasted tomatoes to the pot and stir to coat. Pour in the chicken broth and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to a steady simmer, cover partially, and cook for 12 minutes until the potatoes are just beginning to soften.
Add the Brussels sprouts. Stir in the halved Brussels sprouts and the reserved cooked chorizo. Continue to simmer, partially covered, for another 10–12 minutes until the Brussels sprouts are tender and the potatoes are fully cooked through.
Finish with cream. Reduce heat to low. Pour in the heavy cream and stir gently to combine. Add red pepper flakes if using. Taste and adjust salt and black pepper as needed. Allow the soup to warm through over low heat for 3–4 minutes — do not let it boil after adding the cream.
Serve. Ladle into deep bowls and garnish with fresh cilantro or parsley. Serve immediately with crusty bread or warm flour tortillas alongside for dipping.

Nutrition (per serving)

Creamy Chorizo and Brussels Sprouts Soup — The Warm Bowl I Made the Day After He Came Home