German Sausage Chowder

This is my absolute favorite soup. I found the recipe here a while ago, and fell in love as soon as I tried it.

Here is my first attempt at making a vegetarian version, which I was interested in because homemade vegan bratwurst are a lot cheaper than real brats. (I did a bit of calculating, and figured that if you buy wheat gluten and nutritional yeast in enough bulk to get a good price, you can make that recipe for about $2.50 a batch.) With the vegan sausages, or if you get a good sale for real bratwurst, a pot of this should cost under $7. There are a few more adjustments that I will make next time, but it wasn't bad for a first try.

You'll need 1/2 cup chopped onion; 12-16 oz. bratwurst, cut into chunks (or one batch of vegan bratwurst); 2 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks; 1 can corn; 3 cups milk; 1 cup (about 4 oz.) shredded swiss cheese.

Also 4 cups shredded cabbage; that's kind of important. It's a great way to use up cabbage that has been sitting in the fridge for weeks and will otherwise get thrown out.

Oh, and 3 tbsp. flour. Just imagine there's a picture there.

Add the onions, sausage, and potatoes to a large pot with 2 cups water; simmer for 20 minutes.

Add cabbage and corn and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Add 2 1/2 cups of milk. Mix the last 1/2 cup milk with 3 tbsp. flour and stir in; simmer until thickened.

Add the cheese and salt & pepper to taste.

This is what I love about soup; it's so easy.

So here are the things I would have done differently:

• Used more spices in the sausages. They were fine on their own, but did not hold the spices when added to lots of liquid in the way that real sausage would.
• Along those lines, add the vegan sausage at the end of cooking, rather than the beginning, and use vegetable broth in place of all or part of the water to make up for the lost flavor.
• Do not skimp on the fat! I normally use 2% milk in this soup, which I have to go out and buy special, because when I'm at school I rarely drink milk and when I'm at home all we have in the house is skim. This time I figured, hey, 1% milk, it's pretty much the same thing, right? But no. Some things taste perfectly fine without added fat, but this is not one of them.
• Sautee the onion slightly before adding the other ingredients. I usually do that, but this time I forgot. I also probably could have used a little more onion, but that's usually true.

Guess the only thing to do is try it again.

(Originally posted to Cheap Cooking on July 24, 2008.)