Instant Pot Rustic Sausage Vegetable Soup
This recipe for Rustic Sausage Vegetable Soup is our tastier, heartier and more refined substitution for the Cabbage Soup Diet. This recipe was scaled for our 8 quart Instant Pot, so it makes a giant pot of health soup, less than 100 calories per serving. This is a perfect lunch or dinner entree for a family eating healthy meals together, or to keep ready for yourself and the “eat all you want” plan — so as the “what you want” is a clean eating choice.
There have been many variations on Weight Loss Cabbage Soup or so-called WW Soup and Wonder Soup recipes, which are each tasty and nutritious. There are also several soups earmarked as ideal for those following the Penn State Volumetrics Eating Plan, which encourages staving off hunger by choosing to eat a larger quantity of an ideal food instead of a lower quality or density of the same food. Both the Pritikin Eating Plan and the Volumetric Eating Plan, for example, encourage us to choose 1 baked potato with a pat of butter instead of 1 serving of potato chips. The same food, both with fat, but one has much more density and satiety than the other.
The beauty of this soup is the versatility. Don’t want to include the starchy vegetables (potato, peas, corn and beans)? Omit them. Want to leave out the sausage? Great, that means even less fat and also makes it vegetarian. You can also swap out the chicken broth for vegetable broth to make it vegan. Use what you have on hand, or what you need to use up, and it may differ slightly, week to week, but it will always be filling and nourishing.
Servings: 18 Servings
Calories: 85kcal
This is our take on the "eat all you want Cabbage Soup" diet. We've made a flavorful soup with mostly vegetables, and a wee amount of flavorful sausage to give it a "little help" with flavor. We enjoy this for lunch, dinner, in a thermos. and keep it on hand for when we are hungry but want something low-calorie.
Equipment
- Pressure Cooker
Ingredients
- 1 link Smoked sausage - fully cooked (such as Aidell's). Choose chicken, pork, or kielbasa as you choose. Our stats are for 1 link of chicken apple sausage
- 3 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 3 cloves Garlic
- ¼ medium Onion - chopped
- 1 medium Potato - peeled and diced into small cubes
- 1 cup Peas - fresh or from frozen (see note)
- 1 cup Corn - fresh or from frozen
- 2 cups California Vegetable Blend - Cauliflower, Broccoli and Carrots - fresh or from frozen
- 2 cups Artichoke Hearts - frozen (not canned with oil or other ingredients)
- 2 cups Cabbage - rough chopped
- 1 cup Celery - rough chopped, including leaves
- 1 medium Tomato - rough chopped, seeds discarded
- 1 tablespoon Ranch Buttermilk Dressing powder - optional (see note)
- 1 tablespoon Au Jus Powder - optional (see note)
- 1 can Small White Beans - drained (such as Navy or Cannellini)
- 32 ounces Chicken Broth - low sodium
- 2 cups Water
Instructions
- In the Instant Pot 8 quart pot, select "saute" and add the olive oil.
- While the pot and oil are warming, chop up 1 medium link of low-fat smoked sausage into bite size and smaller pieces. This sausage is included for a bit of flavor as opposed to a major protein source.
- In the oil, saute the sausage pieces, the diced onion, and the garlic cloves, until soft, translucent and fragrant.
- Add in the chicken broth and water, and leave the pot on "saute mode" so that it begin to warm the broth and everything we now add (the majority of which was frozen).
- Chop the potato, celery and leaves, and tomato into small bite size pieces, and add to the pot, stirring as you go, while it is still.
- Pour in the quantities given of the frozen vegetable blend, peas, corn, and frozen artichoke hearts. Add or subtract frozen vegetables of your choice as you go.
- Drain and rinse the canned beans, and add to the pot, stirring as you go.
- Add the chopped cabbage, stirring as you go.
- Now we begin to season. We have a container of Au Jus (dry) powder mixed with dried Buttermilk Ranch powder, and this is our "House Mississippi Blend" we use on chicken and roasts, so we added about 2 tablespoons of this (or you could use 1 teaspoon of each if you don't have it combined as we do).
- Now taste and add your favorite combo savory seasoning blend. We added 1-2 tablespoons of our favorite Spice Blend Of All Time (which we use on EVERYTHING savory it seems) -- Penzey's Ozark Seasoning. You can choose what YOU like -- perhaps it's chili seasoning, or curry, or even steak seasoning, so long as it isn't too high in sodium. The Ozark blend includes salt, Tellicherry black pepper, garlic, thyme, sage, paprika, mustard, ancho, celery, cayenne, dill weed, dill seed, caraway, allspice, ginger, cardamom, bay leaf, mace, cassia, savory, and cloves.
- Stir and taste your broth. It should be flavorful, but not overpowering, because you can always adjust when the soup is done.
- Cancel the "saute" mode and select "soup" mode. Set the timer for 30 minutes. Seal the pot with the lid.
- Release manually, remove the lid, and unplug the pot. You don't want the vegetables to get mushy during slow release. Stir and taste, and season as you like, with more spices if necessary.
- Serve and enjoy, and feel full and sated!
Video
Spa Index Kitchen Notes
1 potato for the entire recipe? Yes. We want a bit of starch to help thicken the broth, but not enough to be a primarily starchy soup. To reduce starchy vegetables, omit or decrease the peas, corn, potato and beans, and select other frozen vegetables of your choice.
1 sausage link for the entire recipe? Yes. We wanted the slight bit of fat and flavor for the entire pot, but not enough to increase fat levels. You can always serve a lean protein on the side, or add leftover diced chicken or turkey to the soup when serving.
If the vegetables we used were frozen, we added them to the pot exactly like that -- frozen.
Regarding the peas and the corn -- these items cook so quickly, there is no need to add them before the 30 minute pressure cook time. Once you quick release and remove the lid, you can stir in your frozen corn and peas right then, and stir until heated through before serving. Or, if you just want a single step, go ahead and add them with the rest of the vegetables. We've been happy with the outcome with either method, but the peas stay greener if stirred in later.
We used Penzey's blends, but choose a seasoning blend which suits your tastes, including curry, steak or chop seasoning, or even chili. Just make sure it isn't too high in sodium. Speaking of which ---
Regarding the Ranch and Au Jus powdered mixes. We love making Mississipi Pot Roast and Mississipi Chicken quite often, but one full pack of each of those spice mixes is just too darn much for us -- not only in sodium, but in intensity. We think you can get by with FAR less (and far less butter, too) than called for in the original. So, we purchased 2 packs of Buttermilk Ranch Powder, and 2 packs of Au Jus mix, and we mixed them together in a sealed shaker jar. When we make those dishes we just lightly season with our pre-mixed Mississippi blend. When we make this soup, we may add 1-2 tablespoons depending on whatever other seasonings we're using. It does add a bit more sodium, but remember we're stirring in up to 2 tablespoons into nearly 26 cups of soup in an 8 quarts pot. It's a tasty addition.
For our 8-quart pot, we elected to allow for 18 Servings, which is roughly 1.5 cups per serving.
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Nutrition
Serving: 1 Serving | Calories: 85 kcal (4%) | Carbohydrates: 12.6 g (4%) | Protein: 3.35 g (7%) | Fat: 2.9 g (4%) | Cholesterol: 2 mg (1%) | Sodium: 154 mg (7%) | Potassium: 305 mg (9%) | Fiber: 3.5 g (15%) | Sugar: 1 g (1%) | Vitamin A: 609 IU (12%) | Vitamin C: 15.7 mg (19%) | Calcium: 32 mg (3%) | Iron: 1.2 mg (7%)
Very simple and basic which means very good, also
This was SO easy and SO filling and SO low in calorie, I truly thank you
First — ok — WHY didn’t I do this before? I read the notes about Mississippi Blend. I make Mississipi Roast (never tried it with chicken!) for my husband and teens all the time. Too salty for me. I tear open one pack of each — Buttermilk Ranch and Au Jus. Why didn’t I just keep them combined like you say? Our dollar store has them all the time so I bought several packs of each, mixed them together in a container and there you go. Mississippi Blend. Now I can slowly but surely decrease the amount used so it’s not quite so salty.
Second — this soup was so easy, so tasty, and let me clean out the ENTIRE freezer and fridge of assorted leftover bagged vegetables. The only downside was I used purple carrots and they turned a little weird looking. You know what? Now I have “Mississippi Sausage Vegetable Soup” to serve. With my additions mine turned about to be 24 cups at 110 calories each. Thanks, it was perfect, and cheap and filling.
his was REALLY good and really easy. Veggie Soups are healthy but usually boring without a ton of added fats, like butter and roux etc. Good with 1 potato (I used sweet) and one sausage (I used Italian). I’ll make this again. I used a bag of coleslaw for the cabbage, and the rest of the veggies (except the potato) were frozen! All was done in 30 minutes as directed. My total with the Italian Sausage came to about 100 calories per cup, so I can eat this several times a day when I’m hungry as my 100 calorie “snack.” Much better than celery sticks. When I’m not counting calories or dieting and an afford to adapt this a little, I think I’ll add a big rind from Parmesan to give it some cheese flavor.
Excellent but added various lean cuts of meat so ours was about 125 per cup and more protein we have got enough for a month.