This easy Sausage & Cabbage Soup is the ultimate comfort food. A beautifully luscious soup with smoky sausage, fresh vegetables and of course sweet tender cabbage simmered in a flavorful creamy broth.
When the weather gets cooler, in my house it’s officially soup season. There is just something about a delicious warm bowl of soup that warms your belly from the inside out and this creamy cabbage soup recipe is no exception. If a hug were food, it would be this soup.
Cabbage and Sausage
Cabbage and sausage just seem to go hand in hand. If you’ve read my blog before, you likely know that I love all things cabbage from Cabbage Roll Soup to Sausage and Cabbage cooked on the grill! Cabbage is inexpensive, a little bit goes a long way and once cooked, it’s tender with a delicious sweet flavor.
This is just one of my many favorite cabbage recipesfavorite cabbage recipes. If you don’t cook with cabbage often, you can find lots of great info in The Ultimate Guide to Cabbage!
Irresistibly Creamy
This easy soup starts with sausage, I use kielbasa but you can also use a garlic sausage or pretty much any smoked (fully cooked) sausage that you’d like. I make this cabbage soup with potatoes to give it a nice creamy texture (and to keep my belly full all day long). Fresh carrots and cabbage add both fresh and sweet flavors to this soup and of course cream makes it buttery irresistible.
While this is a creamy soup, keep in mind it is not a thick soup like a chowder. The creamy portion of this soup comes from making a roux. While roux may sound like a fancy or difficult cooking term, it’s really easy. A roux is the base for most white sauces (and even Sausage Gravy) and starts by cooking butter and flour (to get rid of that raw flour flavor) and then adding in milk or cream and cooking until thick and bubbly. The roux is then added to the soup in this recipe giving it a delicious buttery cream flavor.
More Cabbage Soups
- Crock Pot Cabbage Roll Soup – Easy favorite version of cabbage rolls!
- Cabbage and Noodles – Classic Haluski recipe!
- Cabbage and Sausage Foil Packets – Perfect for grilling or baking.
- Cabbage Roll Soup Recipe (video) – All time reader favorite.
- Easy Cabbage Rolls – Best ever homemade cabbage roll recipe.
- Slow Cooker Cabbage Soup – Healthy veggie filled soup!
How to Thicken Your Sausage and Cabbage Soup
If you’d like your soup to be thicker, you can certainly increase the butter/flour mixture to about 3/4 cup each while leaving the milk the same. I also give my potatoes just a slight little mash with a potato masher to help thicken the broth somewhat.
We add a little bit of fresh dill to this soup at the very end for a pop of freshness. If you don’t have fresh dill you can substitute dry dill and add it along with roux to allow it to rehydrate.
Can you Freeze Creamy Cabbage Soup?
Unfortunately, most soup recipes that contain dairy don’t freeze well (non-dairy is usually ok). The soup can separate and the texture can become grainy. I would suggest freezing a portion before adding the dairy in this recipe.
Ingredients
- 1 pound smoked sausage sliced
- 2 tablespoons butter
- ⅔ cup diced onion
- 4 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
- ¾ pound potatoes peeled and diced, about 2 to 3 medium
- 2 carrots sliced
- 3 to 4 cups chopped green cabbage
- 1 rib sliced celery
- salt and pepper to taste
- ⅓ cup butter
- ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup milk
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill
Instructions
- Cook sausage, onion and butter until onion is tender. Add celery, carrot, potato, cabbage, broth and salt & pepper to taste.
- Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 10-15 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
- Meanwhile, melt butter in a small saucepan. Stir in flour and cook over medium heat about 2 min. Add milk and cream and stir until smooth. Continue whisking until thick and bubbly.
- Once vegetables are tender, add cream mixture into the soup. Allow to simmer 5 minutes.
- Remove from heat and stir in dill and parsley.
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Soup
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More Creamy Soups to Try
- Baked Potato Soup – Creamy and delicious, this soup recipe tastes just like a loaded baked potato.
- Creamy Seafood Chowder – A cream soup fully loaded with tender chunks of seafood!
- Roasted Cauliflower Soup – A vegetable soup with layers of flavor.
- Potato Leek Soup – A classic restaurant soup made easy at home!
- Ham and Corn Chowder – The best ever corn chowder recipe!
- Creamy Carrot Soup Recipe – Kids love this naturally sweet carrot soup recipe!
Surprisingly tasty for such an easy recipe. Quite good as is and very easy to build upon if you wish to change. Want to use a smoked salmon or trout switch up the base broth to clam or shrimp bullion. Have any other smoked meat but no dill sub smoked paprika, perhaps tarragon. Recipe is very forgiving. No cream use evaporated milk or double the butter and use what milk you have. Thanks for sharing as this is both yummy and easy!
Yum. I loved this! Just made half since it’s just me. Still have some leftovers.
Me too, Peg. Wish it was freezable but the milk/cream and freezing is a no-no.
everything sounds great
Thank you for the sausage & cabbage soup recipe, Holly.
This is very good soup! I do think the cabbage should NOT be added at the same time as the carrots, celery, and potatoes as it gets too soft. I use dry dill weed and parsley instead of fresh.
This was delicious. I just had some pork sausages that I sliced up and were tasty in it. I used vegetable stock and didn’t have dill and it was still flavoursome. I also made a quick damper to have with it which went nicely. Thanks for this recipe, I have never made cabbage soup before, but I had a large cabbage to use up and was looking for something that could be a main meal rather than a side dish. Everyone ate it, even my fussy 11 year old.
Just made this tonight. Used chicken sausage the kind with apples and it made the soup a sweet flavor which I loved. Will definitely make again. I used regular dairy milk this time but I wonder if using almond milk instead of dairy milk would enable it for freezing?
I have never tried freezing it with almond milk but I would recommend taking out the portion to want to freeze before adding the dairy, Elaine. Then you can add the dairy in when reheating.
Hello! We have had this approximately 600 times since I found your recipe!
I was wondering if you thought I could swap out the flour for cornstarch or another alternative to make it gluten free?
Hi Amber, I haven’t tried making this recipe gluten-free but you could try swapping the flour a gluten-free all-purpose flour. If using cornstarch you won’t require as much of it as flour so start with about half the amount and work your way up if needed.
I used xanthum gum and instead of flour and it was delicious
Looks good
This was very good! My only suggestion is to add the cabbage after the other ingredients have begun boiling. I could definitely taste the cabbage but couldn’t find much of it.
Wonderful addition to my sausage and cabbage recipe collection! I didn’t have celery so added some celery salt, also subbed dried herbs for fresh.
looks yummy
How long will this soup keep in the fridge..?
Hi Lisa, it should last about 3-4 days in the fridge.
Great recipe! My produce box sent me a giant cabbage, and I didn’t want to make any more cole slaw! I found this recipe and had nearly all the ingredients already.
I couldn’t find sausage in my freezer, but we did have a ton of ham I had chopped up and frozen after Thanksgiving! It was a fine substitute. My only other changes were omitting celery since I didn’t have any and using dried herbs Instead of fresh. Oh, and I subbed almond milk since that’s what we use for milk.
The roux was easy to make, and I thickened the soup nicely by mashing some but not all of the potatoes after they were tender.
Such a delicious way to warm up in the winter. My little kids liked it too! Thanks!
This is a great recipe. I had never made a cream soup using this method before, but I plan to incorporate the process to any cream soup I make. Thanks!
Made this soup last night for the first time and it was amazing! It is hard to believe you can achieve such full, rich flavors in only 35 mins. This is definitely a new family favorite!
Taste-wise this was fantastic. Thank you. It’ll be going into our rotation. However this says 12 servings and its more like 5-6. 4 of us and Each of the 2 kids had 2 helpings.
This was sooo good! I fixed some baked cornbread to eat with it. I will differently cook this again!
Love love love this rich satisfying soup Made this for my husband and I and we both had two helpings. Served it with a square of cornbread. Thank you for the recipe and it will become a favorite way of fixing cabbage!
Thanks so much Alma! I am so glad you enjoyed the soup!
This is so amazingly good! I used evaporated milk because I had it on hand, and I omitted the parsley only because I missed it when I read through the ingredients. It was fantastic. We’re having the leftovers tonight!
I am so glad that you enjoyed this recipe and were able to make it work with what you had on hand!