Sausage and Cabbage Soup

It's been cold and rainy here in Los Angeles for the last few weeks.  What I love best on rainy days is a nice bowl of hot soup!    So I decided that I would make a huge pot to eat throughout the week since the forecast calls for rainy (but no chance of meatballs).

I had originally bought a small head of cabbage to make sausage and cabbage stir fry but decided a nice sausage and cabbage soup might be just what I needed instead.

I grabbed:

1 package smoked sausage

1 medium onion

1 small head of cabbage

3 carrots

1 can of diced tomatoes

fresh, crushed garlic

3 cups of chicken broth

seasoning salt

black pepper

Italian seasoning 

You'll notice in the pic above, there's also some breakfast sausage.  I decided to throw that into the soup since it needed to be used up and the beauty of soup is pretty much throw it all in the pot and it pretty much always works out.

A few years ago, my partner bought me this Instant Pot pressure cooker for Christmas.  I LOVE it.  Sometimes, I go months without posting recipes because I'm using this pressure cooker.  Since I'm making soup, you can also do this in a crock pot or on the stove top.  What I love about this pressure cooker is that it's super easy to use and most importantly, I'm not afraid of it.  (For reals!  My mom had one that used to scare the crap out of me and we all stayed on the other side of the house until it was finished cooking in case it blew up.  It never did, but it was scary!)

The Instant Pot is awesome because it has a sauté setting on it!  So set it to sauté or if you're using a stove, heat to medium high.  

Add some olive oil to heat.

Throw in your diced onion

and sliced carrots

Season with seasoning salt or just plain salt.

Add a generous amount of black pepper.

Since I'm using up this breakfast sausage, I pop them out of their casing and throw into the pot.

Give it a quick sauté.

I used HALF the smoked sausage, but if you want more, you can throw it all in.  

I like to cut mine into bite sized pieces, but feel free to cut into whatever shapes make you happiest.

I love cooking and eating garlic so I'm not shy and added 2 large tablespoons of fresh, crushed garlic.

Then I threw in one tablespoon of this dried Italian Seasoning.

Rinse your cabbage and chop into rough pieces.

Since I'm cooking it into soup, I don't cut the cabbage into shreds.  I do nice big square chunks.  It's easy to cut up cabbage.  Just remember to cut around the center because you don't want to use the harder core part of the cabbage.

Throw in all your cabbage.

The pot is starting to look really full, but don't worry.  The cabbage cooks down a lot.

To my pot, I add one entire can of diced tomatoes (juice and all).

I like to make my own chicken broth and freeze.  You can find the recipe here.  You can used store bought broth for this recipe.  Beef or chicken works fine and even veggie broth too!  I used about three cups.   If you're using the stove top method, then you should probably use four cups of broth.  But in a pressure cooker, there's no means of evaporation so a little goes a long way. Plus the cabbage will also produce some liquid too.

Pour in your chicken stock.

Put on your lid.

Instant Pot has a soup setting.  It's 35 minutes. FAST and super energy efficient.

Just make sure the nozzle is closed and walk away!

If you're using the stove top, just let it simmer for about an hour.  Crockpots can be set for 2 hours on high.  If using the pressure cooker, it will be done in 35 minutes and you an either let the pressure come down on it's own or release the pressure.  Just remember the cabbage gets pretty soft so quick release is the way I go for this recipe.

You can add rice to this soup if you wanted.  It's very similar in flavor to stuffed cabbage rolls.   If you're interested in stuffed cabbage rolls, you can click here to see my recipe.  But if you don't want to spend all that time rolling, just make the soup!  There's plenty to share and this soup freezes well too.

Stay warm and dry!

Garlic Lobster with Black Bean Sauce

I want to be clear that this dish is kind of a fusion of Korean and Chinese.  The idea behind it is Chinese, but the ingredients are a mixture of both.  I guess the point here is that you can use anything you have on hand to make garlicky and savory dishes.

This one uses left over lobster meat and some veggies that I had on hand.  You can eat this dish over rice or even over noodles...or even straight out of the pan while standing over the stove.  I mean, it's hard to wait to get to the table sometimes.... ;)

I grabbed:

2 cups of cold lobster meat

1 small onion

2 stalks of celery

1 small red bell pepper

1 cup of oyster mushrooms

2 tablespoons fresh, crushed garlic

1 tablespoon fresh, minced ginger

2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons oyster sauce

1 tablespoon black bean sauce (I used the Korean kind.  Chinese kind works well here too)

olive oil

black pepper

crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

In an ideal world, I would have used a wok.  But 1) I have an electric stove and 2) I can't get my wok hot enough.  So a large non-stick frying pan will have to do.  This dish cooks super fast because the idea is to flash fry all your veggies and sauces and not over cook your lobster, especially if you're using already pre-cooked lobster like I am.  If you're using raw chunks of lobster meat or shrimp, you can coat them lightly with some corn starch and salt.

Cut up all your vegetables ahead of time so you can cook everything in order and quickly.  Recently, I discovered that I LOVE cooked celery and root veggies so I sauté them every chance I get.  I also love onions and bell peppers so I use them too.  If you don't like celery, don't use it.  You can use carrots or napa cabbage.  There is almost no way to go wrong with this dish.  I know there are folks out there that don't like mushrooms, but I love almost all mushrooms and find that the spongy, meaty oyster mushroom when pan fried or sautéed almost passes for meat.  So I throw them in too!   

Once you start cooking, this dish is done in 5 minutes so make sure you prep all your ingredients first or you'll end up with burned garlic or burned something and that would stink...

Take your sesame oil, oyster sauce and mix together and set aside in small bowl.

Over high heat, add about 2 tablespoons of oil.  Do NOT use sesame oil.  It will burn.  I just use olive oil or canola oil.

When the oil is hot enough where it almoooooost could start to burn, throw in your garlic.

Throw in your crushed ginger.

I love spicy and garlicky so I add a healthy amount of crushed red pepper.  And also throw in as much black pepper as you'd like. 

Then I throw in my tablespoon of Korean black bean sauce.  This sauce is very salty so there is no need to add any additional salt.

It already smells amazing!  

Throw in your veggies so they can get yummy! Stir fry for about a minute or two.

I do the mushrooms last since they don't take as long as the onion, bell pepper and celery. The mushrooms will done in another minute or two.

Stir everything up!  

Throw in your lobster.  If you're using raw lobster or shrimp, you'll need to give it at least 2 minutes to cook.  But if using cooked lobster or shrimp, you just need to coat it in the sauce and veggies.

Speaking of sauce,  throw that in now too!

Now it's really getting serious in here! 

That's it!  You're done.  Eat!

If you like your veggies crunchier, then make sure not too over stir fry them.  If you like them a little more done, you can fry for longer.  Remember you don't want to overcook your shrimp or lobster.  They tend to get chewy and hard to eat if they are over cooked.  

If you'd like this dish to be a little saucier, you can add a splash of chicken stock or veggie stock.  And if you need to thicken it up a bit, add some corn starch dissolved into a tiny amount of cold water and add to your pan.

Spoon over rice or noodles.  Or go low carb and skip the rice or noodles.

Enjoy!