Sausage Soup

This Sausage Soup is the perfect meal for a chilly day.  It's so easy, delicious, and inexpensive!

Typically the only thing I need to buy to prepare this meal is the sausage which if you stalk the meat department pretty regularly you are bound to find for pretty cheap.  Unless it's an absolute emergency, I almost always purchase meat that is nearing the sell-by date because it has a nice meat department coupon on it.  Sometimes I get the name brand if I have a manufacturer's coupon to combine with the store coupon but a lot of times the store brand sausage with the store coupon ends up being cheaper.  You could probably get a pack of sausage for $1 or $2 and either make the soup that day or put the meat right in the freezer for another time.

8 cups beef broth (I use 2 or 3 bouillon cubes dissolved in hot water)
1 teaspoon dried basil
2 cans diced tomatoes, undrained
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon olive oil
1 package (16- 19.5 oz) italian sausage
1 onion, diced
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 cup dry macaroni

Put the broth in a large pot with the basil and both cans of tomatoes and heat to a simmer.

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan.  Squeeze the sausage out of the casings and brown it in the pan.  (Okay, this part is kind of nasty for those that don't like handling raw meat!  You can cut the casings open and just let the insides plop out or you could just start with ground sausage if you prefer but it's probably going to be more expensive that way).  Cook it like you would ground beef.

Add browned sausage to the soup mixture.

If you don't have enough oil left in the pan, add another teaspoon and sautee the onions until they start to get soft.  Add the garlic and cook them together for just a couple of minutes.

Add the onion and garlic to the soup mixture.

Deglaze the frying pain with about a cup of broth from the soup and add it back in because why would you want to lose any of this yumminess?

Simmer on low for 15-20 minutes.

Add the dry macaroni to the soup and continue to simmer until the macaroni is soft; about 15-20 minutes.

If you don't want your macaroni to "grow" while sitting in the leftover soup, you could always just cook it separately, put some in a bowl and then pour the soup on top of it and mix together.  I think this is how my sister does it.  I like to dirty less pans...

You can store leftovers in the fridge or freezer and add water or broth when you reheat if it has gotten too think.

YUM!

Adapted from Kalyn's Kitchen's recipe found here.