Slow Cooker Creamy Gnocchi Sausage Kale Soup

The polar vortex arrived this week like a debt collector. Twenty-two below zero on Wednesday. Windchill of negative forty. The school cancelled. The roads closed. Iowa became a freezer and everyone inside it became the food. I kept the oven running most of the day — not for cooking, for warmth, which is either resourceful or a fire hazard depending on who you ask. Kevin checked the pipes every hour. They held. The furnace Dad's new furnace held too — I called to check, and he said, "It's warm in here," with the wonder of a man who has spent two winters with a dying furnace and can't believe this is what heat feels like.

I made three kinds of soup in three days. Monday: potato soup, thick and creamy, loaded with bacon and cheese, the kind of soup that insulates you from the inside. Wednesday: chicken tortilla soup, spicy enough to make you forget it's negative forty outside. Friday: a massive pot of ham and bean soup from a ham bone I'd been saving in the freezer since Christmas, because ham bones are currency and you don't waste currency in January.

The kids handled the cold differently. Noah retreated to his room with the robotics kit and emerged only for meals, building something that whirred and blinked. Emma camped in the living room with a blanket fort and three books. Jack sat at the kitchen table with his seed catalogs — new ones had arrived in the mail — and planned his 2018 garden with the intensity of a commander planning a campaign. He's made his seed selections: Beefsteak and Roma tomatoes again, sweet corn (Bodacious, always Bodacious), green beans, sunflowers, and this year, peppers. Bell and jalapeño. He's expanding the operation. He's diversifying. He's seven in March and he's diversifying his agricultural portfolio.

Kevin and I played Scrabble after the kids went to bed because there was literally nothing else to do. He won by twelve points. He played "quartz" on a triple word score. I played "compost" and argued it should count double because it's a more important word. He said that's not how Scrabble works. I said that's not how Scrabble works for quitters. We argued about it for twenty minutes. This is marriage at negative forty. This is love in the polar vortex.

Three soups in three days, and by Saturday I was already thinking about a fourth. When it’s still negative twenty and Kevin’s won at Scrabble and Jack’s planning his pepper empire and you’ve kept the oven running so long it feels like a family member — you don’t stop making soup. You just find one you can throw in the slow cooker and forget about while you argue about whether “compost” deserves bonus points. This one’s creamy, hearty, and requires almost no effort, which is exactly what you need when the polar vortex has taken everything else out of you.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 6 hours | Total Time: 6 hours 15 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 pound Italian sausage (mild or hot), casings removed
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
6 cups chicken broth
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
4 cups chopped kale, stems removed
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 pound potato gnocchi (shelf-stable)
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the sausage, breaking it into crumbles, until browned and cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Transfer to the slow cooker.
Build the base. Add the diced onion, garlic, chicken broth, diced tomatoes, Italian seasoning, and red pepper flakes to the slow cooker. Stir to combine.
Slow cook. Cover and cook on low for 5–6 hours or on high for 3–4 hours.
Add the gnocchi and kale. During the last 30 minutes of cooking, stir in the gnocchi and chopped kale. Cover and continue cooking until the gnocchi are tender and the kale has wilted.
Finish with cream. Stir in the heavy cream and Parmesan cheese. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let it warm through for 5 minutes before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow Cooker Creamy Gnocchi Sausage Kale Soup — The Fourth Soup for a Polar Vortex Week