Kale, Red Cabbage, Sweet Potato, And Ham Soup

Great soups are always welcome!

This is a healthy soup full of highly colored vegetables. Further, I discuss the nutritional elements of the vegetables included in the Soup, like Kale, red Cabbage, and sweet potatoes. I am sure you will enjoy eating this healthy and tasty Soup soon.

I remember my mother always having a soup pot on the stove in cold weather. She was fondly known as “The 365-Day Soup Lady.” She got this name from a carpenter who did construction on our house, and she would make him a different soup for lunch every day. Those were the old days when it was considered good manners to feed anyone who came to your house to work or visit.

If you have wondered how to make an old-fashioned soup that will satisfy the most fastidious soup foodie, this is your recipe!

Kale, Red Cabbage, and Sweet Potato in this Ham Soup are guaranteed to warm you through and through on any fall or wintery day! This is an easy soup to make.

Think of the European folk story called Stone Soup. The tale tells of a hungry person who is making a meal with only stones. He convinces townspeople to each add a small amount of their food and add it to the soup. They all share and partake of a better soup than each would have had alone. The moral of the story is sharing.

Though I often create a soup using leftover vegetables, this recipe is worth making precisely as it says. A pot of slow simmering Soup lets you do other things around the house, and then when lunch or dinner comes around, you have an excellent meal to sit down to with the family.

A mixed-up soup with many different things added is an excellent way to clean the fridge and throw everything in a stew pot. Add a little of this or that, and those eating at your table will wonder how you came up with something so delicious and want the recipe. Now I wonder, how do you tell them the Soup was created using so many leftovers?

When making a soup from leftovers, it helps to know what tastes good together,
which is a sixth sense cooks gain in time.
This allows you to do other things, play with the kids, read a book, or fiddle with chores,
then dinner will be ready when you are!

The basis of this soup recipe is a left-over ham bone, frozen and saved for just such a day when a good soup is called for. Considering our foods must be gluten-free, I buy only the old-fashioned kinds of natural hams. Again, always read the ingredient labels on foods. They sneak wheat into the oddest places you would ever suspect, and naturally, gluten-containing food becomes inedible for you and me to eat. Oh well, it keeps us on our toes, huh?

This is traditionally a hearty cold-weather soup. However, there are times every season when a steaming bowl of delicious hot Soup is just the most comforting food you need.
Please Scroll down for the Recipe.

Consider Kale…

Did you know that Kale has more nutritional value than spinach? The dark leafy green vegetable is so good for you! Kale promotes healthy digestion, reduces blood pressure, controls blood glucose levels, and promotes healthy skin, bones, and hair. Kale is high in beneficial potassium and crucially important vitamin K and is a good source of fiber. Among its other health-benefiting nutrients are antioxidants, calcium, vitamin C, iron, and chlorophyll.

Be sure to wash Kale well. One of the downsides of commercially grown Kale is that pesticides are used in its production. Either buy Organic or, of course, if you can grow some yourself or buy it at a farmer’s market where you can speak directly to the grower, then by all means, indulge. Otherwise, please don’t give up eating Kale, but don’t have it every day. (see the source article at the bottom of this page)

Potatoes, Sweet, White, or Purple

Sweet potatoes are a portion of wholesome comfort food. Soft, easy to eat, and filling, they are a good source of fiber. Sweet potatoes contain a little more fat and sugar than their white potato cousins, but they provide almost your daily quota of vitamin A. So worth exchanging sweet potatoes and white at your dinner table often. They are all good for you, whether white, yellow, sweet, or purple, whether called yams or sweet potatoes.

Colorful Red Cabbage – Also known as Purple Cabbage, Red or Blue Kraut

When your plate is composed of lots of highly colored vegetables, this is healthy eating for sure! Red Cabbage is something we don’t eat enough of. It is packed with nutrition, including Vitamin K, Vitamin C, Manganese, Vitamin B6, and Folate. There are many ways to eat Red Cabbage, some people love it, and some don’t. In this recipe, you will hardly notice it is there.

The Ham Bone

I always buy a ham with bone in it. You have to read the label for ingredients, as some of the fancy sliced hams can have some gluten-containing spice added. When they remove the bone, they glue it back together to look pretty using wheat glue.  

WHEAT GLUE! YUK, FOR PEOPLE LIKE US WHO HAVE TO EAT GLUTEN-FREE!

I like the most natural old-fashioned ham I can find. So, make sure you buy gluten-free ham. They are usually marked now. Otherwise, read the ingredients carefully.

I often find that the best hams are offered near holidays. This is when I buy a ham or two and freeze them for later use. After roasting ham and I save leftovers, baked ham is delicious and served in many different ways. One or two meals, though, and it seems we are all “hammed-out,” so I leave some of the ham on the bone and freeze it for Soup later on.

Good ingredients make good soups. Colorful veggies, a little ham bone for flavor, and a little perk up of gelatinous/collagen bone broth goodness, combined in just the right ways, make for a perfect bowl of comfort soup.

You can have a delicious slice of brown bread with your soups again. The recipe and from-scratch flour blends are contained in my cookbook. Gluten-Free, You Can Do It -by Trina Astor-Stewart.

Here is the Recipe!

The bread shown was made with Trina’s Brown Bread Mix 6B- Formula as contained in Gluten-Free. You Can Do It. There are 7 Mixes. The A Series is the original formula. The B and C Series take other food sensitivities and allergies into consideration. There are 4 flour blends and 3 bread mixes in each series. You only make the series that fits your food sensitivities. All are gluten-free. There is a chapter of recipes for every mix.