Zuppa Toscana

Method

1. sear7 min
   medium-high, broken into chunks
   sausage until browned in spots and cooked through, lifted out with its fat left behind — the sausage is the soup's entire spice cabinet: fennel, chili and salt arrive in this one ingredient, which is why the seasoning list below is so short
2. fry5 min
   medium
   bacon in the same pot until crisp — two pork fats layered on purpose; the bacon's smoke is the copycat's secret over a plain sausage soup
3. sweat5 min
   medium
   onion in the rendered fat until soft, garlic for the last thirty seconds — scraping the sausage fond up as the onion releases its water
4. simmer15 min
   medium, until the potatoes yield
   + stock + potatoes, sliced thin enough to cook fast and shed starch — the half-moons fray at the edges and quietly thicken the broth, which is why this soup needs no flour
5. simmer4 min
   kale in, just wilted
   + kale until it collapses from bouncy to silky but keeps its green — it goes in late by design; kale boiled from the start is army-green and bitter by serving time
6. season2 min
   low, off the boil
   sausage back in + cream + salt + pepper, warmed below a boil — the cream rounds the pork fats into one broth; taste before salting, because two pork products already came salted