15 bean soup

I love soup, and I love beans. I love bean soup.

I bought a bag of mixed beans at the grocery some time ago, and last weekend I decided it was a good time for soup.

I wanted to add flavor to the beans in the soak water, but I wanted to be careful. I know that when you use dry beans, there are some ingredients that you do NOT add until the beans are thoroughly cooked. Acid, for example, will prevent beans from softening, no matter how many hours you cook them. I know this from my own sad experience. Salt, also, has this effect. I read about using dry beans, but didn't find other things to avoid.

So.

I soaked the beans with a raw chopped onion, and a big clove of garlic which had been put through the press. I put the beans on to soak one night after supper, and they soaked in the fridge until I was ready to cook the next day.

Of course different beans cook for different lengths of time, and my grocery store assortment had lentils and split peas, which don't take long at all. I decided that since many bean recipes call for mashing or blending some fraction of the beans to make a thicker soup, I would achieve that end by cooking the quicker legumes into oblivion as they waited for their slower compatriots to finish cooking.

I drained the soak water, added new water (enough to cover plus just a bit more), brought it to a boil, and simmered, covered, for about 1.5 hours, stirring two or three times during the cooking.

At the end of cooking, I added a couple of tablespoons of canola oil, some chopped greens left over from the vegetable soup I made last week (the guy told me they were turnips, but I really think they were radishes!), about a teaspoon and a half of salt, a can of tomatoes, and now's where it gets more interesting.

I sniffed the beans, and sniffed the various seasonings we have. I know you can put just about anything on beans, but I wanted to be careful and not put *everything* on, and end up with a mishmash sort of taste.

I settled on Penzey's Northwood seasoning. I put in two or three teaspoons of that, and then ground on some red chili pepper.

Five minutes of further cooking took the "raw" off the greens.

This is the first time I have totally invented a recipe for soup, and it was pretty good. There was (barely) enough for a second meal. Next time I'll use more than one bag of beans, and look for at least two more meals. These would be good with Jiffy mix corn muffins, I bet.

I love the muted earthy colors of the beans, and I love the brighter accents of the greens and tomatoes.





















One thing I need to figure out how to do better is about the onions. That raw onion really stank up the house when the soup began to cook. To the extent that we could still smell it the next day. Ick. Not sure how to handle that. I don't know what would happen if I pre-cooked the onion before the soak..... I may try that.