Vegan Root Veg and Sausage Soup

This is such a warm, hearty and tasty soup for the fall and winter months! It’s sweet and savory and full of health benefits such as antioxidants and anticancer properties. Sweet potatoes also help keep inflammation down and protect the cardiovascular system. Sweet potatoes have also shown to be helpful in improving neurological disorders, metabolic disorders and can improve intestinal barrier function. [this information can be found on the National Library of medicine website] Sweet potatoes are rich in nutrients such as beta carotene, vitamins A and C, potassium, copper, riboflavin and pantothenic and folic acid. If that’s not enough to get you to try it there are also many health benefits in the butternut squash!

Butternut squash, like sweet potatoes, has potassium which is important for healthy blood pressure which helps protect you from stroke and heart disease, but that’s not all! Butternut squash can help protect you from colorectal cancer! Butternut squash is a good source of vitamins A,C, E, B vitamins and magnesium. Your body uses magnesium to build bone.

You can find information about the benefits of nutrients such as beta carotene and vitamin C as well as other nutrients found in butternut squash on the healthline website. There they talk about studies that indicate these nutrients help protect you from cancers as well as reducing risk of all cause mortality which is just a term for death from any cause.

With all of these health benefits and it’s sweet and savory deliciousness, how can you not at least try this soup? Even if you don’t like sweet potatoes the savory flavors of the butternut squash and the vegan Italian sausage balance out the sweetness of the sweet potato.

I really hope you try this recipe and i especially hope you enjoy it because it really is something nice to do for your body!

For this recipe you will need the following ingredients:

1 1/2 -2 cups of diced sweet potatoes

1 1/2 -2 cups of diced butternut squash

1 small onion

1 teaspoon of garlic powder

1 teaspoon of onion powder

1 teaspoon of paprika

drizzle of oil

4 cups of vegetable broth

4 hot Italian Beyond Sausages

salt and pepper to taste

Dice the onion into tiny pieces and saute them over medium heat in a drizzle of oil until the onions become translucent. Chop up the sausages and add them to the pan with the onion. Saute them until they are cooked through and set that all aside.

Put the diced sweet potatoes and squash in a soup pot with the vegetable stock and spices. Simmer until the pieces are tender when pierced with a fork. Take the soup pot off of the burner and allow it to cool for about 5 minutes. Blend until it becomes a consistency you are happy with.

Add the sausage and onion mixture to the soup pot and taste the soup. This is where you can adjust the seasonings to your liking. If you ever find that your soup it too salty just cut up a regular potato and cook it low and slow until it’s fork tender and it will soak up a lot of the extra salt. You can then leave it in or remove the pieces. It’s your call.

This soup is a great meal prep option because it freezes well [as long as you don’t have unblended chunks of potato left in it] and it reheats beautifully in the microwave. You can make a large batch and freeze small individual side dish size portions to have along side your other meals to get that boost of nutrition anytime!