Continuing the theme of beans in our Back to Basics cooking series, I thought I’d share some of my favorite bean soup recipes. Don’t feel limited by a recipe though – feel free to experiment by adding beans to your own creations.
Winter Minestrone with Turnips, Potatoes, and Kale
What are some of your favorite soups that use beans? Come back tomorrow to link up all of your favorite bean recipes. I’m hoping that someone has a killer recipe for rice and beans–next week in the Back to Basics series we will explore rice!
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I’ve been looking, for years, for a basic recipe for Spanish Rice either with or without beans and definitely without cilantro – I can’t even stand the smell of that stuff. We generally had our Spanish Rice without beans while growing up, but I wasn’t able to find my Mom’s original recipe after she passed away. It may have been something she just made up, but our family ate very few spicy foods because my Dad didn’t care for them, except a little chili occasionally.
Any ideas? I know it’s not a soup, but I didn’t know where else to put the question.
My favorite beany type soup is just the old fashioned ham bone navy bean soup. I can remember Mom soaking the beans overnight in a huge ceramic bread bowl but, of course, I was usually in school when she performed the rest of her magic. I remember a bay leaf (because I fished it out one time after she forgot to remove it) and I also remember the black peppercorns (unusual to a kid in the 1950’s). She added a mashed potato or two (just boiled with the skins on and mashed with a fork, then added to the soup, I think) and celery. I do believe she added some worchestershire sauce, too, but not positive about that. I have no idea what else, but it was the best. Of course, Mom’s soups were always the best, next to gramma’s soups!
I love soup of all kinds, but for me I like the more bland type soups. Kinda like my Dad, I guess. I like cold soups for summer, too, so I hope you have some of those recipes coming up!
we’ll actually be talking about rice next week – I will try to remember to ask your question there and hopefully someone will have the answer!
I have a Spanich rice recipe that doesn’t use cilantro. You can find it here:
http://www.theprudenthomemaker.com/index.php/spanish-rice
I also have lots of bean soup recipes here (along with other bean recipes):
http://www.theprudenthomemaker.com/index.php/recipes/beans
I have a favorite rice and beans recipe that’s not on there yet, but it wil be going up this summer when we have tomatoes in the garden again.
Thank you for the recipe links.
Also wanted to mention that I love all the German soups, although they usually involve a dough of some sort and mosts of the “no grains” people just go into complete spasms if I mention using unbleached flour to make dough. I never mind them, most of the time because I make things the way I know how to make them. I tried a couple of my gramma’s German recipes using whole wheat dough, and believe me, it just didn’t turn out the same.
I like knoepfle (everyone spells it differently), and kase knoepfle (cheese buttons). Now, I know some cooks who try to get very fancy with these soups, but the best ones are very, very simple. For the plain knoepfle, just water, potatoes (cubed), diced onions (lots and lots and lots) and a little salt and pepper, with a dollop of bacon grease. Brown onions until very, very browned (almost burned) in the bacon grease, add the water and potatoes, boil until the taters are softish but not mushy, make a thick dough that you can hold in your hand of flour and water and salt (nothing else) and cut off pieces of the dough and drop into the boiling potato water. When the noodles have cooked for about 5 minutes, you can strain some of them out of the soup with a slotted spoon and add them to a pan of bacon grease and butter combined and fry them until they are browned. Delicious with a glass of fresh, raw milk and a veggie of some kind.
The cheese buttons are a bit more complicated, but worth the effort.
If you have German or Swedish recipes for soups, I’d love to see them. Thanks!
knoepfle sounds wonderful! I’m not very familiar with German or Swedish recipes, it’s something I want to learn more about though because as I learn about midwest food traditions I can see the various settlers that have had an influence. I happen to live in an area that was most influenced by Dutch immigrants.
A lot of the Amish cookbooks have recipes for various German foods, since many of those settlements were established by folks of German ancestory. But a lot of them were Dutch, as well. Some of the recipes would probably be quite similar actually.
Also, if you’re a history buff as well as a culinary creator, like me (!), you might want to check out getting the cookbook called Heritage of America (put out by Better Homes and Gardens in 1993) – – – and there is an original one (by the same name) from 1975 which is truly interesting, as well. I have had both of them for some time and wouldn’t give them up for anything. If I’m bored on a winter afternoon, I can make 4-5 hours go “poof” by just pulling one of these two books off the shelf.
I found the 1975 version of the book at oldcookbooks.com but they may both be found at other links, too.
WHat a great selection of soups!
I’m hosting a weekly blog carnival specifically for soups, stocks and chowders, every Sunday! I would love you to come and share some of your soup recipes. Just stop by my blog on Sunday – the link will be up!
http://www.easynaturalfood.com
I hope to see you there:)
Debbie
Thanks for the recipes! My favorite bean soups are Apricot Lentil Soup and Garlic Kale Sweet Potato Soup. I like orange vegetables!