This is an accidental recipe that came out so well that it's worth writing down! I started out with this terribly freezer-burned bag of broccoli florets, and I was trying to find an alternative to just throwing it out.
You will need:
About 2 quarts chicken stock
1 large bag (4 lbs.) frozen broccoli (this is the mega-bag that they sell at Wal-Mart and Sam's)
Parmesan cheese rinds (or grated Parmesan cheese)
1/4 cup medium to dry sherry (optional, or you could use white wine)
1-2 cups heavy cream
around 1.5 lbs. hot Italian sausage
salt and pepper to taste
Put chicken stock and broccoli in a large stock pot, and simmer until broccoli is cooked. Add Parmesan cheese rinds, cream, and sherry. (You can make this more or less creamy depending on how much you put in.) Simmer for 15 minutes. (You could use grated Parmesan, but you can usually get the rinds very cheaply at any store that grates it's own Parmesan, and it's great in soup.)
While the soup is simmering, sauté the sausage. It's best to use patties or to remove the casings from whole sausages, because you want it to crumble. Cook sausage until cooked through and crumbly; then drain on paper towels. (I think you could also use ground pork and season it to taste.)
Remove the Parmesan rinds from the soup (or you could leave them and fish them out when you serve the soup).
Add sausage to soup, season with salt and pepper to taste (cayenne pepper is nice in this).
There are about 4 carbs (or 2 net carbs) in a cup of broccoli, so this is pretty low carb by any measure. I didn't exactly measure this precisely, but even if you use all the cream, it's probably only about 150 calories per cup, if that (a little more if you use grated cheese).
