Alton Brown's Christmas Soup Recipe

Alton Brown's Christmas Soup Recipe Alton Brown: I’m here with the Neely’s preparing my family soup. We have this every year at Christmas time. It is a—soup in origin. Loaded with garlic, kielbasa. I’ve got a pot kielbasa that we have just browned off here and I’m getting that out of the pot. Gina: So, what’s the name of this soup? Alton Brown: We call it Christmas Soup. Gina: Christmas Soup. Alton Brown: We only make it on Christmas Eve. It’s the only time all year around. And it’s a soup, so Christmas soup seems like a good name for it. So, that’s nice and brown, got that off. We got enough fat rendered in the pot here out of that. That’s the only cooking oil. All right, that’s fine. I’m going to bring the pot over and then you put it in. Gina: Okay. Alton Brown: Rake that in. Pat: Is all of this going out? Alton Brown: Watch the point, yes. This is a garlic soup. You get it right off the blade. I don’t want to burn it because you know this stuff will burn pretty easily. Drain those beans. Gina: Okay. Alton Brown: We got a pound of kidney beans. Go ahead and drain those while I sweat off this garlic. I’ve been making this soup for as long as I can remember. My mom taught me this soup. It’s really the only culinary tradition that we have for Christmas and I have no idea working from. We just know that it’s been in the family since we got our start. It may have come over on a—I really don’t no. Just dump them in. The only other liquid that goes in here is actually chicken broth. Gina: Do you need two? Alton Brown: Now, you hold this one, just putting that in there. I’ll let this stock to a boil and I’m going to cook these -- we’ve got plenty of time to hang around, so I’m going to let these beans cook for 45 minutes. Pat: The great thing about a great soup during the holidays is you know, 2 o’clock in a day, you have a bowl of soup and you’re just warming up for dinner. Alton Brown: All right, so they’re definitely done. Go ahead, dump that in. I’ll wait over here. Gina: Look out! Potatoes going in! So now, that looks good. You just lid it up and let it steam. Alton Brown: I would say until the potatoes are almost done, 15 minutes. Kale will be next. Got to have your vegetables. We’re not going to cut it, we’re going to rip it. We’ll do it like the collard green. Gina: Yeah, we know about that. Alton Brown: The lid goes on. Some people like to cook kale for a really long time. I think it losses all of it’s body and kind of disappears into a soup like this, so I like to cook it no more than 10 minutes. Now, right before we serve, the last seasoning, about a quarter cup of red wine vinegar. All right, so vinegar, then we need a lot of black pepper. I would go with at least half a teaspoon total of the black pepper so that you got a little bit of fire when it gets in yor mouth. I like to put the kielbasa in the bottom of the serving bowls and for the soup on top of it because that’s the only way to make sure everybody gets to eat a portion or even better to make sure I get more. So, that’s Christmas in my house.