A funny thing happened this Thanksgiving. Dad – as usual – prepared the meal while Mom played hostess. As I helped him transfer our feast to the table, there was a shortage of room for the dishes prepared. Everything ended up on the table… EXCEPT for the sweet potatoes. Those remained up on the pass through window from the kitchen to the dining room.
No one noticed until the meal was over and thus, a full casserole of sweet potatoes remained untouched.
Lovely.
Mom and I began brainstorming how we might re-purpose this dish into a whole new meal and thus, our Sweet Potato Soup was born.
In the beginning, we weren’t honestly sure how it would turn out… and were a bit concerned with Dad’s reaction. Luckily for all of us, it turned out amazing and everyone loved it.
Not only that, it was fairly simple and ended up creating 2 more meals for our family. We used the sweet potato casserole from Thanksgiving, complete with marshmallows on top, but you could easily just make this with fresh sweet potatoes as well.
The beauty of this recipe is you can customize it to your preferences. Want a different kind of sausage? Go for it. Out of Celery because it was all used in the stuffing? Use celery salt instead of regular salt or omit it all together.
This recipe is very flexible and highly forgiving so give it a shot and see what masterpiece you come up with.
- Approx 2 lbs sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed
- 1 tablespoon Olive Oil
- 1 whole onion – diced
- 3-4 Celery Stalks – diced
- 2 White potatoes – diced and cooked
- 1 bag (16 oz approx) sliced Carrots frozen (obviously fresh could be used here)
- 1 lb spicy smoked Turkey Sausage
- Season to taste – we used Garlic, Salt, Fresh Ground Pepper
- Chicken Stock to the desired consistency.
- Saute diced onion and celery in a stock pot with olive oil
- If needed, mash your sweet potatoes until they are the desired consistency. We prefer a chunky soup in our house, but it’s really up to you.
- Add mashed sweet potatoes and diced, cooked white potatoes to the onion celery mix
- Add in carrots (we used frozen because that’s what we had on hand. Fresh would obviously work as well but you might want to saute them a bit with the other veggies)
- Add enough chicken stock to reach the soup consistency you prefer – more for a thinner soup, less for a thicker stew.
- Season to taste and let simmer on low for an hour or more.
- about 30 minutes before serving, add sliced Turkey Sausage and allow to simmer for remaining cook time.
What other creative uses for leftovers have you tried?
Of COURSE you could. We just used what we had on hand to avoid a trip to the store on Black Friday.
Oh YUM!!! That looks great… does it have to be turkey sausage? Cuz… nasteh. Can I use REAL meat?