Have been cooking Green Soup for years (with almost same recipe). Delicious. Don't understand need for 8 hour cooking of canned beans, or why you would discard onion and garlic. Kale would best be cut very finely. I usually add a few potatoes. Thing I'll make some right now.

I left out the garlic salt, and added a little more paprika [in addition to what's in the Andouille], and I added some marjoram and saffron. I envision making this again and trying adding oregano, tarragon, chervil, or basil. Also, I used Linguiça Portuguese sausage, because I happened across it in a Latin market near me; it's not usually readily available in my area.

I used these ingredients but substituted a fresh chicken basil sausage. Added half quartered onion and crushed garlic to only chicken broth along with spices. Also added some crumbled left over bacon bits. When onion nearly cooked added sausage for 1 and a half hours. Removed solids from broth and skinned sausage and broke it and onions into smaller chunks. Put kale and carrots into broth for another 90 min. Added sausage and removed onions, bacon bits and crushed garlic. Added pinto beans (on hand) and a can of spicy pepper crushed tomato. Heated to temperature at YUM!

The proportions are great, but I've made a few changes to the method. I start with the sausage, halved and sliced in the pot with some olive oil so it won't stick. I cook that for a little while, then remove the suasage and add the carrots, cook for about 3-5 min, then add the onion, celery and garlic (half a jalipeno, seeded deveined, sometimes) and cook until they are soft. I add all the the other ingredients, including sausage and simmer until done, about an hour-and-a-half. I make this every few weeks during the cold months and the whole family loves it.

I changed it up a little; chopped up the onion and garlic, threw it in the crockpot with the chicken/beef stock, beans, sausage, and carrots. Don't add any extra salt, the sausage will take care of that! Also added a few tablespoons of tomato paste and a splash of red wine. let it cook on high for around 3 hours, then added the chopped up kale. SOOOO delicious

This soup was tastey to me. Some of my kids and husband really liked it and some kids thought it was just alright. I do not think the serving amount is correct, or maybe I just serve big bowls of soup, but I think not. Thank goodness I used another quart of chicken stock for a total of 3 quarts of stock. I followed other suggestions and chopped the onion and minced the garlic, and added extra garlic. I substituted green chard for kale. I also added bit of red pepper flakes and tossed in about 3/4 cup of frozen okra to help thicken it up just a bit.

I found this dish had a lot of potential but really lacking in flavor. It was quite bland and I figured out why. Why simmer canned beans for 8 hours and then discard the onion and garlic? This caused everything at this point to be way over done (8 hours cooking on LOW). Why add garlic salt when you've added fresh garlic cloves and kosher salt? Increase the garlic cloves and kosher salt. Lastly, by adding the sausage only long enough to smell the sausage fails to infuse it's flavor into the beans. Bottom line, cook the whole thing except for the kale for about 4 to 5 hours. That said, I made it again, added 3 chopped serrano peppers, 1 with seeds, increased the garlic cloves 8 fold and added the kale half way through. To me, the secret here is to infuse all of these wonderful flavors including the sausage into the beans and kale.