Pasta/Sausage Soup

The bag meals are up to sixty people. It happened almost without my noticing—I was making fifty bags and then Sister Agnes said she had talked to the Birmingham Food Bank and they could bring us additional ingredients one day a week and so I made sixty bags, and sixty people came to the church door, and sixty it is now. My kitchen is running at full production every Monday and Tuesday. Calvin has become genuinely useful—he manages the packaging station, which I designed in one corner of the kitchen, and he is methodical and thorough in a way that surprises me less and less the more I work alongside him. He was always a detailed man. He just applied the detail to sermons rather than food. Now the sermon is food. Same detail. Different container.

I have been thinking about Mama. The nursing home is on lockdown—visitors are not permitted, which means I cannot go to Bessemer, which means I am calling every day and talking to aides who hold the phone to her ear and describing what I'm cooking while she may or may not be hearing me. I tell her about the sixty bags. I tell her about Calvin packaging the mac and cheese. I tell her about the spring rain on the kitchen window. I tell her every thing that the kitchen is doing because the kitchen is her language and if she hears anything it will be the kitchen. I have to believe she hears. I have to believe she is still in there, still my mother, still the woman who stood at the Bessemer church kitchen and taught me everything.

The forsythia by the fence is done but the dogwood is just starting—late this year, later than usual, as if April itself was waiting to see how things would go before committing. The dogwood doesn't know about the pandemic. The dogwood is just doing its annual thing: blooming. The world is strange and the dogwood is blooming and I am making sixty meals a week in my kitchen and Bernice is in a nursing home I can't visit. This is April 2020. This is what is.

The mac and cheese is what I tell Mama about on the phone, but the soup is what keeps sixty people warm on a Monday—and this pasta and sausage soup is the one I come back to when I need something that holds up in a bag, travels well to a church doorstep, and still tastes like somebody’s kitchen made it with intention. It scales. It forgives you when you’re distracted by the dogwood outside the window or the aide who just put the phone to your mother’s ear. It is the kind of recipe that a kitchen can run on.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 10 (scale as needed)

Ingredients

1 lb Italian sausage (mild or hot), casings removed
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, sliced into rounds
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 1/2 cups dry small pasta (ditalini, elbow, or rotini)
1 tsp dried Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp black pepper
Salt to taste
2 tbsp olive oil
Grated Parmesan for serving (optional)

Instructions

Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until browned and cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Remove sausage with a slotted spoon and set aside, leaving drippings in the pot.
Sweat the aromatics. Add onion, carrots, and celery to the pot. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Build the broth. Pour in crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, and chicken broth. Stir in Italian seasoning, basil, and black pepper. Return the cooked sausage to the pot.
Simmer. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes to let the flavors come together.
Cook the pasta. Add the dry pasta directly to the pot. Stir and cook until pasta is just tender, about 8–10 minutes. Taste and adjust salt as needed.
Bag and serve. Ladle into containers or bags immediately. For bag meal distribution, allow soup to cool slightly before sealing. Reheat in a pot or microwave. Top with Parmesan if serving at the table.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pasta/Sausage Soup — The Pot That Fed Sixty While I Talked to Mama