Meals · Soups & stews

Creamy Tuscan chickpea soup

Name: Creamy Tuscan chickpea soup
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Yield: 6 servings
Ingredients: 1 tbsp olive oil; 200 g Italian sausage, casings removed; 1 onion yellow onions, diced; 3 cloves garlic, minced; 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped; 1 tsp red pepper flakes; 2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed; 1 litre chicken broth; 2 big handfuls cooked kale, stems stripped; 1/2 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp black pepper

Chickpeas, sausage, kale and sun-dried tomatoes, with a third of the chickpeas blended back in to make it creamy. No cream anywhere, and you would not guess — the body comes from the legumes themselves.

Time: 45 min (15 prep + 30 cook)
Servings: 6
Per serving: 310 kcal
Protein: 16 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil14 g
200 g Italian sausage, casings removed200 g
1 onion yellow onions, diced150 g
3 cloves garlic, minced9 g
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped60 g
1 tsp red pepper flakes2 g
2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed480 g
1 litre chicken broth1000 g
2 big handfuls cooked kale, stems stripped200 g
1/2 tsp salt3 g
1/2 tsp black pepper1 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Brown the sausage in the oil in a large pot, breaking it up, 6–8 minutes. Add the onion and cook until soft, then the garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and pepper flakes for a minute.
Add the chickpeas and broth and simmer 15 minutes.
Ladle out about a third of the soup, blend it smooth, and stir it back in. This is the step that replaces the cream — don't skip it and don't blend the lot, or you lose the texture.
Stir in the kale and cook 5 minutes more until it softens. Season and serve.

Why this score

solidly filling

Low energy density — a lot of food for the calories.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

20% of kcal

81% water

27 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 1859 kcal goes into the pot, 2119 g of ingredients comes out as ~1950 g of food → 95 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 95
Protein: (20%); 5 g
Fat: (45%); 5 g
Carbohydrates: (35%); 9 g
of which sugar: 3 g
Fiber: 3 g
Sodium: 401 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.