For National Food Waste Prevention Week, we partnered with Homegrown Minneapolis and Chef Nettie Colón to share some simple and delicious ways to reduce food waste at home. Chef Nettie showed us how to make caldo, a type of Portuguese soup. This recipe focuses on using surplus ingredients and underused parts of produce! Find the full recipe below and grab farm fresh local ingredients to make it this weekend.
Caldo Verde (Portuguese Soup) with Kale Pesto
By Nettie Colón
Ingredients
For the Soup:
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1 large Spanish onion, diced.
- Sea salt to taste
- 2 – 4 cloves fresh garlic, smashed
- 6 medium potatoes, washed, peeled, and roughly chopped.
- 8 cups of vegetable stock (previously made with the trimmings of vegetables, ingredient list below)
- Ground black pepper or white pepper
For the Kale Pesto:
- ¼ cup of olive oil
- ½ cup of pepitas
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 Tablespoon of nutritional yeast
- ¼ teaspoon of salt
- 2 packed cups of curly kale chopped (save stems for the vegetable stock for this soup)
- 2 Tablespoons of lemon juice – put all ingredients into a blender or food processor.
For the Vegetable Stock:
- Onion skin and ends
- Garlic skin and ends
- Potato peels thoroughly washed
- Kale stems
- Whatever other vegetable skins or peels you have from prepping other vegetables that would add flavor
- Herbs, bay leaf, or whatever other spice of fresh herbs you have around that you would like to use up
- 16 cups of water – bring all to a simmer and cooked until it has reduced by ½.
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil to medium heat in a soup pot big enough to accommodate all the soup ingredients.
- Add the diced Spanish onion and a chef pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent, then add the smashed garlic cloves and cook for about 2 minutes more.
- Add the potatoes and 8 cups of vegetable (or a combo of water and vegetable stock or chicken stock if desired) and bring to a boil at medium high. Once you have reached a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook until the potatoes are tender, 10 to 20 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and let the soup cool slightly for about 5 minutes. Using a blender puree the soup in batches and return to the pot.
- Taste and season with more salt, if needed, and freshly ground black or white pepper.
- Ladle the caldo into bowls and garnish with a tablespoon heap of the kale pesto and mix into the soup to make it turn into The Caldo Verde!
