Fresh turnip green soup with sausage is a healthy budget-friendly clear low carb soup.
This southern soup is also known as swamp soup recipe.
I show you how to make this soup from scratch further below in the recipe.
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📕 What are turnip greens?
Turnip greens are the leaves of the turnip root, which are edible as well.
The greens are at times sold separately.
Often while the greens are simply thrown out and not used in the kitchen because it is not common knowledge that the greens are edible and healthy as well.
💡 Preparing
If you have whole turnips with roots and greens, simply cut off the leaves from the roots.
The roots can be used in myriad other ways in your food. I like to make a fresh turnip salad or cook mashed turnips, but you can bake a turnip puff too.
For the green tops, simply rinse the vegetable and cut them small.
You can use the leaves directly in your food, just cut them small OR place them into a bag and store in the fridge or even in the freezer.
Stored in the fridge, turnip greens can be kept for about 2 weeks.
🥗 Cooking the greens
Turnip tops are great raw in salads when they are young and still tender as they are a bit sweet.
Larger turnip greens make a great turnip green soup recipe, such as today's turnip greens with sausage soup.
Or you can sautee your turnip greens in a pan, grill or add to a casserole dish the way you would do spinach, chard or collard greens.
The greens are very versatile, so you can get creative using up your healthy turnip greens.
🔪 How to make this soup?
For this soup keep your fresh or frozen turnip greens ready, as well as the other fresh ingredients such as onion, garlic and carrot.
The complete recipe with all the ingredients listed and full instructions can be found at the bottom of the post.
Step 1
Cook your onions soft with the garlic in a soup pot.
Add the sliced carrot and sausage pieces as well and sautee everything.
Step 2
Throw in your turnip greens and sautee until the leaves have reduced in size for about 2 minutes on high heat.
Pour stock/broth into the pot and season with salt, black pepper, nutmeg and bay leaves.
Step 3
Bring to a boil and cook the soup for about 25 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked and the soup has got some flavor.
Pick out bay leaves and discard before serving your soup hot.
📜 Variations
You can add or switch out the following ingredients to make this turnip greens soup your own:
- use smoked Sausages or chicken pieces
- add other greens too such as mustard greens, collard, chard, cabbage or spinach
- make this soup with black eyed peas
- use beef or chicken broth instead of vegetable broth
- add other soup spices and herbs such as juniper berries and lovage to add flavor.
If you want to add dumplings, you can choose to add any of the following:
- passatelli - Italian lemon bread crumb noodle like "dumplings"
- herb schöberl - biscuit pastry and herbs are baked and cut into diamond shapes
- bread dumplings - leftover bread turned into round ball dumplings
Dear Reader, do you grow your own turnips at home?
📖 Recipe
Fresh Turnip Green Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 Tablespoon Oil
- 1 Large Onion chopped
- 2 Pieces Garlic Cloves chopped fine
- 2 Medium Carrot sliced
- 3 Piece Frankfurter Sausages
- 3 Cups Turnip Greens cut smaller
- 8 Cups Water mixed with concentrated Stock or clear Vegetable broth
- ½ Teaspoon Salt
- ¼ Teaspoon Black Pepper Ground
- Pinch Nutmeg
- 2 Small Bay Leaves
Instructions
- Heat up a soup pot with oil and the cut onion.
- Sautee your onion until translucent and add your chopped garlic.
- Add the carrot pieces and continue to stir occasionally over a medium heat setting.
- Throw in the sliced sausage pieces as well and briefly sautee over high heat while stirring everything so that nothing sticks on.
- Reduce the heat setting and throw in the cut turnip green pieces. Mix and stir occasionally until the leaves have reduced a bit in size.
- Pour the vegetable stock/broth into the pot and mix quickly.
- Season with salt, black pepper, nutmeg and bay leaves.
- Mix everything well and bring to a rolling boil.
- Cook on medium to high heat for about 25 minutes or until you think your soup tastes ready and the vegetables are cooked.
- Pick out the bay leaves from the soup before serving and discard.
- Serve soup hot asap.