Lately I’ve been craving soup. Specially french onion soup but I haven’t had the booze I needed to make the broth sing. Recently I took some out of town clients to Charbar for lunch, a fairly new Argentinian style restaurant I’ve admittedly been to several times. I ordered the lunch special (and they did to) of half a salad and the daily soup. I encouraged them to have the fugazza (pizza) with their soup. The soup was an Argentinian inspired tomato & sausage soup. Wow was it ever good. In fact all four of us at the table completely enjoyed the soup. I decided to try and make my own version of this soup at home.
Have you heard of Spolumbo’s sausage? They are local sausage maker and the sausage is preservative and chemical free. I use it in pasta sauces, soups and we especially love it grilled on the BBQ. You can use whatever uncooked sausage you love in this soup. I also added a small piece of leftover parmesan rind as I’ve seen chefs do this to add flavour and depth. It did something because the soup was the best tomato soup I’ve ever had.
It’s a simple soup that screams flavour.

Ingredients
- 2 cups uncooked Italian sausage
- 3 strips bacon
- canola oil
- 1 medium onion diced
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 - 28 oz can whole tomatoes
- fresh thyme couple sprigs
- parmesan rind any size
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 2 bay leaves dried is fine
- salt and pepper
- 1/4 cup cream
- 1 tbsp butter
- parsley
Instructions
- Heat a sauce pan over medium heat and add the bacon. Cook until crisp, remove from pan, chop and set aside. Pour out all but approximately 1 tbsp of the bacon fat.
- Remove sausage from casing and add to pan breaking up into smaller pieces. Cook for 3 minutes and add the garlic and onions and cook until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Drizzle in a little oil if needed.
- Add tomatoes, thyme, parmesan rind. chicken broth and bay leaves. Turn heat down to simmer. Season with salt and pepper and let cook for about 25 minutes. Add more chicken broth if soup cooks down.
- Discard the thyme, bay leaves and Parmesan rind. Puree the soup in a food processor or with an immersion blender until smooth and leave in pan. Stir in the cream and butter. Season with salt and pepper.
- To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle with the bacon and parsley.
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