Beans and greens soups, from fancy to basic

 

OK, I'm not sure which ones count as fancy. Maybe the ones with fried halloumi cheese crumbles or frizzled onions, which seemed like potential nice touches. I tried three soups recently that fall into the beans and greens genre, and they really weren't repetitive. 

As a bonus at the end, a way to assemble your own beans and greens soup recipe based on a sort of Garanimals version of what's in your refrigerator and pantry at the moment.

Autumn vegetable soup

From dietitian Ellie Krieger in the Fine Cooking Oct./Nov. 2009 issue. Serves 8-ish as a starter. She specifies lower-salt versions of everything when possible.

Note: Depending on what sort of soup pots you've got on hand, you might not need to deploy your biggest one to house this recipe, but quite possibly your second largest. Err on the large side.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped small
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups ½-inch cubes of peeled butternut squash
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of cayenne powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 quart chicken broth
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes
4 sprigs fresh thyme
2 cups thinly sliced kale
1 cup cooked chickpeas

Method

Heat oil a large soup pot over medium heat. Cook onion and carrots until beginning to soften. Add garlic and cook for another minute. Add squash, allspice, cayenne and salt and stir to combine. Add broth, tomatoes and thyme. Cover and bring to a simmer, cooking for 10 minutes. Add kale and chickpeas and cook, covered, for another 10-20 minutes until squash is tender. Discard thyme leaves.

Rating: Nice, and a fairly fast fix if you prechop all the veggies like I did. Pretty pantry friendly, too. A perfectly viable entry into the beans/greens soup category.

Beans and greens soup with halloumi cheese crumbles

From the Winter 2026 issue of Bon Appetit by Rebecca Firkser. Makes either 4 very hearty main dish servings or 8 side dish servings.

Ingredients

1 large bunch Swiss chard
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
6 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
¼ cup double-concentrate tomato paste (the stuff that they sell in a tube)
3 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons hot smoked Spanish paprika
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 15-ounce cans chickpeas or white beans
4 cups broth
1 package halloumi cheese
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon lemon zest

Method

Remove ribs and stems from Swiss chard. Chop the ribs and stems into small pieces. Coarsely chop chard leaves and set aside. (They get added at different stages.)

In a large deep pot, heat 5 tablespoons of the olive until garlic is fragrant. Add chopped chard stems and leaves and cook until nearly tender. Add tomato paste, butter, paprika, red pepper flakes and some salt. Cook a minute and then add beans, smooshing them up a bit as you go. Then add chicken broth, bring to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, pat halloumi dry and break into large crumbles. The recipe recommends using the coarsest grater grind to accomplish this. 

In a skillet, heat remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Add cheese crumbles and cook in a single layer over medium high heat until golden brown. Stir in lemon zest and season with pepper. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add chard leaves to soup and cook for 5 minutes until wilted. Adjust soup seasoning as needed. Serve soup in bowls with cheese crumbles. (If you're making the main soup ahead, make the cheese crumbles shortly before you're serving it. If you've got leftover soup/crumbles, I'd suggest storing them separately in the frig.)

Rating: I liked the smoked paprika flavor, which added a lot of depth to the broth, and it was very filling, as it should be given the plethora of beans in it. I thought the halloumi crumbles brought some additional interest to the soup. Dave liked it without notes. For some reason even though I usually like Swiss chard, I found myself really noticing the chard flavor and not in the best way, so if I make it again, I might try it with kale or spinach. 

Dilly bean stew with cabbage and frizzled onions

Adapted from the Better Homes & Gardens January/February 2026 issue. The original recipe comes from "Something From Nothing" by Alison Roman. Serves 4.

Ingredients
2+ tablespoons butter, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
2 15-ounce cans white beans (I used Great Northerns)
4 cups broth
2 cups coarsely chopped green cabbage
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 cup fresh dill, chopped, divided
Sour cream for garnish

Method

Heat 2 tablespoons of butter and olive oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add onions, coarse salt and some pepper, and cook until the onion gets browned and crispy, a state the recipe refers to as frizzled. You'll need to restrain yourself from the natural temptation to stir them often, since you want them to have more crisp and less soft caramelized onion texture. In other words, the kind of onions you end up when you get distracted while cooking. 

I personally found it hard to distract myself on purpose, but a good way to kill time is to smush up the beans a bit with a fork so some of them are broken up to add creaminess but you've still got plenty of whole beans. I find it easier to do this before adding them to a hot pot.

When onions have frizzled, remove a quarter of them from the pan to a small bowl and set aside to use as garnish later.

Add some of the broth to the pan to deglaze it and then add beans and remaining broth. Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 or 20 minutes to let flavors blend. Leave pan uncovered so it cooks down a bit. Add cabbage and vinegar and cook for another 15 minutes. Remove from heat and add half of the dill. Season with more salt, pepper and vinegar as needed. 

Serve garnished with remaining dill, frizzled onions, sour cream and a bit of softened butter (or a drizzle of olive oil) as desired.

Rating: It may not be the lookiest color-wise, but it's got nice flavor. The only green left visible after that pale green cabbage is cooked is the dill, which does double duty for flavor and color. The smushed beans lends creaminess. All around a decent soup for a day where the incipient hints of spring green up outside have been countered by a light glazing of ice and snow.

What's in the house? Make it into a soup following a simple formula.

Beans and greens soup basic formula

It's great to try new recipes to expand your repertoire, but don't let the perfect ever been the enemy of perfectly fine. Sometimes you're not going to have some of the ingredients called for on hand but you still want soup. That's when you take one from Category A, Category B, etc., until you've assembled a soup. This is one of the more forgiving soup formulas:

Column A, meat, pick one, unless you're opting for meatless:

1 pound ground pork breakfast sausage, Italian sausage, ground chorizo or ground beef
8 ounces chopped sausages, like kielbasa, chorizo, etc.
4 ounces chopped pancetta

Column B, beans:

About 2 cups cooked beans, either Great Northern, cannellini, navy, kidney, black, garbanzo, etc. Include the cooking liquid if you cooked them yourself, or drain and rinse them if canned and add a ½ cup water to make up the difference

Column C, greens:

2 cups of chopped kale, collard greens, Swiss chard, beet greens, arugula or spinach (if using baby spinach leaves, you can leave them whole)

Column D, vegetables:

Generally I'll make sure to have at least these basic three to start:

1 medium onion, chopped small
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 celery stalks, diced

These next are all optional, and you wouldn't probably toss all of these in, but it's nice to have one or two additional veggies according to what you have on hand:

3 or more garlic cloves, diced
Fennel bulb/stalks, chopped small
Swiss chard stems, chopped small
1 bell pepper, chopped small (red for color is nice)
2 cups cubed butternut squash
1 medium zucchini, chopped

Column E, tomatoes

Pick one from which ever one of these you have on hand. If you opt for paste, add a cup of water to compensate for the lack of liquid:

1 14.5-ounce can chopped tomatoes and their liquid (or break them up if they're whole)
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
4 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons double-concentrate tomato paste

Column F, broth
4-6 cups broth. The amount you need is going to vary based on how much stuff you threw into the pot, but figure on at least a quart. And yes, in a pinch you can make up some of the difference with water since the veggies will help make it more broth-like.

Column G, aromatics

OK, this is where you can really tailor a soup to your taste and to a season. If you're using a highly spiced meat, keep that in mind before going hog wild on either spices or salt, but if you're avoiding meat, then this is where you'll want to put in some care to amp up the flavor.

Herbs and spices: If you're feeling in a chili-ish mood, add chili powder and ground cumin to a dish with black or red beans. Allspice and cloves add a rich touch to a veggie soup. If you want an herb base, a bay leaf is a good start, or sage leaves, basil, oregano, etc. Fresh is dandy, and you can just add whole stalks and fish them out before serving, or you can use dried if that's what's available. 

The condiment shelf: Chili crisp, black bean paste, soy sauce or tamari, fish sauce, gochujang. Basically a tablespoon or so of one of those would be a good place to start and then taste-test from there. Just remember, this is going to intensify in flavor as it cooks.

The cheese drawer: The end hunks of hard cheese like Parmesan are a big flavor booster, particularly if you aren't using meat.

Method

1. If you're using meat, in a large deep-sided pot, cook your meat of choice until it's no longer pink if ground meat, or saute sliced meat until browned on both sides. You might need to add oil for lean meat. Remove from pan and drain on paper towels; you'll add those back in later.

2. In the same pan, cook the onion, carrots and celery over medium heat until softened. If you didn't use meat or if it was quite lean, you'll need to add a tablespoon or so of olive oil to the pan. If you're using chopped fennel or Swiss chard stems, add those to the onion mixture to cook at the same time.

3. Once the core vegetables have softened, add remaining vegetables of choice like garlic, bell pepper, squash, etc. Cook for another 5 minutes. 

4. Add beans, their cooking liquid or equivalent and whatever form of tomato you're using. Add broth as needed, keeping in mind you'll be adding the meat back in later along with some greens, so be generous. Add any aromatics. Cook for 20 minutes.

5. Return meat to the pot. If you're using kale as your green, add that at the same time and cook for 10 to 15 minutes more or until kale is tender. If you're using softer greens, cook the mixture after adding meat for 10 minutes and then add the greens for another 5 minutes. Adjust seasoning as needed with salt and pepper.

Like many soups, the flavor will deepen if made ahead and reheated.

Fixing the leftovers: What to do when a soup recipe doesn't cut it

It started life as pumpkin Parmesan soup.

Years ago I described my cooking style as relentless. I routinely tried more than 200 new recipes a year, sometimes five of them in a single meal (my definition of an extravaganza). Then I  drifted away from that into just sort of cooking, because when you've tried a few thousand recipes you have more or less figured out what works together and find yourself riffing on what's available that you feel like cooking. Plus I got super busy during the pandemic and some how never got back any semblance of work-life balance and a dependable, uninterrupted meal time.

Now I would describe my cooking style as diligent and strategic. My goal is more to consistently have something tasty to eat for every meal rather than trying to hit any specific target, and preferably to pull that off without burning myself out so I no longer think it's any fun to cook. The key to that is pacing, and leftovers play a crucial role.

Leftovers are a fantastic resource, providing you plan for them so you don't wind up eating the same thing multiple days in a row. That's where the freezer is your friend, and again, having a menu that schedules when you'll pull those out to thaw and recombine in new pairings. Unless I have company, I try to alternate major cooking days with days where I can coast on a previous day's labor for at least some portion of a meal.

So the Chicken Marbella leftovers and their wondrous sauce get paired with a new pan of baked brown and wild rice. The rice leftovers come out a few days later to pair with a roasted pork tenderloin and a piquant salad. The leftovers from a lunch of quiche and cream of spinach soup go into the freezer to each come out later to pair with something else. The dreamy caramelized onion dip leftover from entertaining gets tossed with pasta and some pancetta.

This is all dandy until you run into a dud. If you were disappointed in a recipe upon first serving it, aside from some soups, dressings and dips where flavors intensify with time, your enjoyment isn't likely to improve with reheating another day. 

I tried a recipe for Parmesan pumpkin soup from the "5 in 10 Cookbook," which features the gimmick of things you can make in 10 minutes with 5 ingredients. I thought the combo of a can of pumpkin puree, milk, broth, nutmeg and Parmesan cheese had some promise, and it was certainly fast. But it was simultaneously thin and stringy (from the cheese). The flavor was OK, but it seemed watered down, which might seem an odd thing to say about something that you eat with a spoon, but it just seemed to lack all body. 

I wasn't looking forward to another helping of that awaiting me. I contemplated augmenting it with a super thin white sauce, but that seemed like more effort than this slight recipe deserved. Then I realized its runniness could be my friend: I brought the leftovers to a boil and added a couple cups of radiatore pasta. There was just enough liquid to cook the pasta and wind up with a creamy sauce. So it went from runny soup to roni soup, and now I had a new entree for the leftover menu. 

It ended up life as a pasta sauce.

Bolognese Boursin soup

Converting soups to pasta can also work in reverse. I had leftover black bean Bolognese sauce on hand when I saw Amy Sheppard's Instagram post on making Bolognese sauce into soup. I had two cups of sauce, added a quart of broth, a round of Boursin and a handful of chopped parsley and it yielded a very nice, super fast soup. Definitely would repeat.

It started as pleasant pasta sauce and ended up as really nice soup. 

Along those same lines, the Star Tribune Taste section recently published a New York Times piece on three soups that repurpose the components of other dishes, including hummus, three-bean soup and pesto pasta. All look plausible.

Three bean soups

As in three soups that have beans in them, not three-bean soup, which is its own thing. When you think of bean soup, if you're like me, the first thing that comes to mind is navy bean with ham or bacon. But given the variety of beans out there, there's a wide variation of bean soup recipes. In some cases they provide the solid heft, in others, pureed creaminess. Beans' basic blandness lends itself to be a carrier for whatever flavor profile you choose to apply.

The fact that these three recipes are all from Cooking Light is no coincidence. I'm finally starting to slowly go through old cooking magazines to clip likely suspects and recycle the rest. It was one of those tasks that fell into the category of oh, that seems like a good job to deal with when I'm retired. It didn't particularly strike me as odd to retain what are essentially monthly cookbooks, but if casual acquaintances came to the house, they'd invariably comment on the shelves of magazines lining the sunroom. Regular friends don't bat an eye at this apparent aberration, just file that under one of my basic personality quirks.

It's been an interesting exercise going through the back issues. Back then I was going through each issue and writing out on a sheet of scratch paper which recipes I wanted to try from each issue, noting the page number and which sort of meal they were suited for: weeknight supper, weekend lunch, etc. I'd put checkmarks and comments by any I tried and an arrow in front of ones I really wanted to try first. Comparing what I clipped out now to what I wanted to try then shows that tastes change. Recipes I hadn't even marked to try are now in my clipping pile, while some former must-tries didn't move the needle.

This first soup makes me feel vindicated in hanging on to what for others are ephemeral periodicals. 

Creamy truffle-scented white bean soup

From Cooking Light, sometime in the aughts.
Note: This recipe called for bottled minced roasted garlic. That might be a thing still and I just haven't looked for it. At any rate, I opted for roasted garlic from the grocery store deli. I also included a bit of the cooking liquid with the beans, since I used beans I'd cooked and stored in the freezer instead of canned. The recipe also calls for truffle oil, which is dandy, but feel free to try whatever flavored oil you want. My favorite with this is actually a lemon-infused oil.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced roasted garlic
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
1½ teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves
2 cups broth
2 (19-ounce) cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (see note)
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon truffle oil or other flavored oil

Method

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and cook until tender. Add garlic, pepper and rosemary and cook until fragrant. Add broth and beans. Bring to a simmer and cook 20 minutes. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Stir in 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Puree soup. Check seasoning, adding more lemon juice if desired. Serve each of the 4 servings topped with a ¼ teaspoon of truffle oil for each serving.

Rating: Quite nice. Worth making even if you don't have any flavored oils, because the roasted garlic and rosemary do quite a nice job on their own, flavorwise. Decent texture, and really a nice fast fix. While the flavor may deepen a bit if made ahead, it's plenty tasty right away, so it's one you can whip up quickly anytime you have roasted garlic. Well, assuming you have a rosemary bush or the equivalent. Definitely going in the Keeper pile.

Black bean soup

From Cooking Light

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
½ cup diced celery
½ cup diced onion
¼ diced peppers (I used red and yellow since that's what I had)
3 tablespoons chopped carrot
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1½ teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups broth
1 cup water
3 cans (15-ounce) black beans, rinsed and drained
Sliced green onions for garnish

Method

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add celery, onion, bell pepper and carrots. Cook until tender. Add garlic, cumin, oregano, chili powder and pepper. Cook 3 minutes. Add broth, water and beans. Cook 20 minutes. Cool slightly and puree. Serve garnished with green onions.

Rating: Sludgy texture, but that's not entirely a bad thing in winter, and it delivers your basic chili spices. Improves with reheating, so it's one to make ahead for best flavor.

Leek and lima bean soup with bacon

From Cooking Light, June 2008 issue. Makes 8 skimpy servings.

Ingredients

3 bacon slices
2 cups chopped leeks, white and light-green parts only
4 cups lima beans, fresh or thawed if frozen
4 cups broth
1 cup water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ cup chopped green onions for garnish
¼ cup sour cream for garnish

Method

Cook bacon in a large, deep-sided pot until crisp. Remove from pan, drain and chop when cool.

In bacon drippings, cook leeks until tender over medium heat. Add beans, broth and water. Bring to a simmer and cook about 15 minutes. Cool mixture slightly and puree in a food processor or blender. Return to pan and season with lemon juice, salt and pepper. Serve garnished with chopped bacon, a tablespoon of sour cream and some green onions.

Rating: As much as I ordinarily like fresh lemon in pretty much anything, it strikes a really off note in this recipe, so if I ever make it again, I'm going to skip that. The bacon is doing all the flavor work here, and it comes in more fully upon reheating, so I'd suggest making it ahead for better flavor. Because bacon. But overall, this one falls into the category of worth trying, better than canned, but not really worth repeating when the world is filled with tastier soup recipes.

Spiked soups

Some people like their bourbon neat. I apparently like mine warmed through, at least sometimes. Here are three soups packed with a little extra punch. Good for those days when you contemplate if the weather can be said to be a blizzard even when it's not actively snowing, just moving existing snow in a most untidy sideways manner, which was the case when this first soup was made. After that we briefly entered false spring mode, but then the snow made a triumphant return. There's at least a month and a half of prime soup weather left, so drink up. 

Spiked pumpkin soup

Adapted from Cooking Light, November 2005 issue. To restore the recipe's lightness, use cooking spray instead of olive oil and low fat milk and sour cream.  

Ingredients
I cup onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ teaspoon minced fresh peeled ginger
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1½ cups apple cider
14 ounces broth
⅓ cup bourbon
¼ cup maple syrup
1 29-ounce can pumpkin puree
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
Sour cream
Chopped fresh parsley

Method

Add a drizzle of olive oil n a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, ginger and cumin. Cook for about 5 minutes until somewhat softened. Add cider, broth, bourbon, syrup and pumpkin. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.

Working in batches puree pumpkin mixture. Add back to sauce pan and stir in milk, flour, salt and pepper  Heat through, stirring frequently. Serve garnished with a dollop of sour cream and chopped fresh parsley. Serves 6.

Rating: A very pleasant soup. Dave calls it drunken pumpkin soup. I'm not sure if I detect the bourbon, but it's probably there as a background note, which seems better than having it be overwhelming forward. A fairly fast, easy fix.

Bourbon corn chowder

Adapted from Barbara Kafka's "Soup: A Way of Life." 

Note: The original recipe called for igniting the bourbon in a small saucepan and letting it flame for a minute before adding it to the soup. I'm sure that would add a lovely deeper caramel note, but I am match-averse stemming from an childhood incident when asked to do the seemingly simple task of lighting the candles on the table when company was coming over. (Don't worry, only a few of the green beans almondine got singed, so the damage was mainly psychic.)

Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped small
2 (14.75-ounce) cans creamed corn
¼ cup bourbon (see note)
½ cup chicken broth
½ cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 to 3 drops hot red pepper sauce
Ground pepper to taste

Method

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Cook onions in butter over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in corn. Add bourbon (after igniting in a small pan, if desired) and then broth, cream, salt, nutmeg, hot sauce and pepper. Heat through.

Rating: While I'm not usually a creamed corn fan, this makes a quite nice soup. The bourbon is once again more of a background note, adding a sort of silken flavor, if silk can be said to be a flavor. (I'm going with yes.) A very fast fix that's pantry/bar friendly. And then part of me pondered, hmm, what would this be like if I'd made the creamed corn? Luckily, the other part of my brain told me to stop being such a pest to myself and stand down. Makes 4 first-course servings.

This recipe did not call for a garnish, but it occurred to me that if I'd had any fried shallots on hand, that would make a dandy topping for this.

Kentucky bourbon black bean soup

From "The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook" by Albert W.A. Schmid; the restaurant source was Panache, a former French restaurant in Indianapolis and the chef-owner was the late Richard Cottance.

Note: The bourbon in this recipe is by no means cooked off, since it's added as a garnish. Serves 4 somewhat skimpily.

Ingredients

¾ cup finely diced onions
½ cup finely diced carrots
½ cup finely diced celery
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh oregano
1 pinch ground cayenne pepper
1½ cup black beans, divided
3 cups broth
4 tablespoons bourbon
4 tablespoons sour cream
Diced tomatoes
Fresh cilantro sprigs

Method
Film the bottom of a heavy soup pot with a bit of oil. Add onions, carrots and celery and cook, covered, over very low heat until tender but not browned. Add garlic, cumin, oregano and cayenne and cook for about 5 minutes. Add 1 cup of black beans and the broth. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Puree soup. Add remaining ½ cup black beans and heat through.

Serve the 4 servings garnished each with 1 tablespoon of bourbon, 1 tablespoon of sour cream, some diced tomatoes and cilantro.

Rating: Bizarrely, adding a swirl of bourbon as a garnish actually works, at least if you're not concerned greatly about alcohol consumption. I was afraid it would be too in-your-face boozy, but stirring it into a warm soup mellows it immediately. I appreciated the fact that there were actual beans in the soup as well as the pureed variety, which I think helps with the overall appeal of the soup. It was overall fine and worth trying, but I'll stick with another bourbon soup recipe from that same book that has a lot of the same flavors (see below.)

Also, too

I'll add a shoutout to this bourbon chili recipe I've made before, and like a bit better than the black bean soup above.

Turnip soup that doesn't taste like turnips

 

I'm working to break the refrigerator cycle that I fall into annually at the end of the year. A frig packed with farmers market and garden bounty like cabbage and root vegetables that I haven't yet managed to cook my way through has to accommodate all the fixings for holiday madness. Eventually it gets to the point where I can cram all the ingredients I need in, but have no room to store any dish I make with those ingredients, and I have to slowly break the stalemate. 

I am very much hoping that more time to cook will alleviate the boom cycle, and doing my best to cook my way out of any lingering obstructions. Some turnips from the farmers market last fall had somehow survived the Rubik's cube phase of refrigerator storage without moldering, so I found this recipe in my file of soup recipes to try. So one thing out of the frig and one thing out of the clipping pile. 

Silken turnip and potato soup

From Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, adapted from “The Gift of Southern Cooking” as published in the November 2023 issue of Food & Wine

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter
3½ cups sliced yellow onions
5 cups peeled and sliced turnips
2 cups peeled and sliced russet potato
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3¼ cup chicken stock, divided
⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, plus more for garnish
Basil or other fresh herbs chopped for garnish

Method

Melt butter in a large sauce pan. Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned. Add turnips, potatoes and salt and stir well. Cover and simmer on low until vegetables are almost tender, about 20 minutes, adding ¼ cup broth if it starts to stick. Add remaining broth and bring to a simmer. Cook until vegetables are tender. Cool and puree mixture in a food processor or blender. Reheat along with nutmeg and salt to taste. Garnish with a sprinkling of more nutmeg and chopped herbs if desired. The original recipe calls for a garnish of thinly sliced basil, but my house is not conducive to growing basil in the winter, so I opted for sage, since it holds up quite well under the grow lights in the basement. I think basil or parsley might have been a better choice since they're less assertive and less likely to detract from the fairly delicate soup flavor.

Rating: It is indeed silken, and quite tasty. Despite the fact that turnips are involved, for some reason I was mainly struck by how it somehow tasted of parsnips and reminded me of this Parsnip Apple Soup recipe I make about once a year. The potato seems to mellow the turnip flavor, which is a plus for those of us who generally like turnips to play a supporting role rather than in a star turn.

Another year, another chili

It seems like every year the Super Bowl ads get less funny, effective or otherwise useful as a sales tool. If Guy Fieri and a cute horse are your only slightly memorable bits, well, that's saying something. And you know you're going to have the requisite clop-clop horse ad.

But at least there's always a big pot of chili for half time. Dave gleefully dubbed this chili con corny.

Chipotle corn and two-bean chili

Adapted from Cooking Light, July 2006 issue.

Ingredients
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
¾ teaspoon salt
1 pound ground beef
1½ cups chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano leaves
2 (14.5 ounce) cans chopped tomatoes
1 can corn, drained, liquid reserved (or use 1½ cups frozen plus 1 cup of water)
1 cup chopped zucchini
1 tablespoons chopped chipotle in adobe sauce 
1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15-ounce can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
Chopped green onions
Shredded Cheddar cheese
Sour cream

Method

Combine chili, cumin and salt in a small bowl. Put ground beef in a large pot (it filled my second largest pot, and I've got big pots to choose from). Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of spice mixture over beef. Break up with the back of a spoon and cook over medium heat until beef is browned. Remove from pot and set aside.

Add onion to pot and cook until tender. Add remaining spice mixture, garlic and oregano and cook for a minute. Add tomatoes and corn. Add enough water to reserved corn liquid to make 1 cup and add that to the pot. Bring to a simmer and cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add beef, zucchini, chipotle and beans. Cover and simmer a half hour to give flavors time to blend.

Serve topped with chopped green onions, Cheddar and a dollop of sour cream.

Rating: I had a strong suspicion that this recipe was one of those that benefits from being made ahead, since it's basically a ton of canned goods waiting to absorb flavor. I didn't get around to it in advance, so I just assembled this before the game started, turned off the heat after the final simmer and then reheated it at half time. Decent flavor. Comes together with very few dishes, aside from all those cans. The chipotle gives it some heat but not an overwhelming amount.

Did I really need to try yet another chili recipe? No. But that way at least there's some innovation each year to keep me entertained amid the game Dave rightfully labelled puntorama.

A trio of soups to warm our hearts

 

Cream of spinach soup

When I signed up for a buyout at work, everyone seemed to wonder what magnificent plans I had. My internal response was something like "Plans? I'm required to have plans??" My external response was that making a big vat of soup and curling up under a mound of covers with a good book sounded like a great winter break to me. 

But first came Christmas and New Year's cooking/baking hoopla, and I found myself in January with no prepared soups or finished books to my credit and somehow not the inertia to get started on either front. So to get out of my rut, I turned to three women with bona fide credentials, all three of them with an ode to soup cookbook under their belt: Barbara Kafka, Mollie Katzen and Betty Rosbottom.

So now my refrigerator is stuffed with soups to weave into the weekly menu, and I've been making a slight dent in the stack of books at long last, although now punctuated by breaks for doomscrolliing. They may not all be chicken soups, but they're still good for the soul, and we need that right now. I love my adopted city of Minneapolis, and it needs all the soup and good will it can get. It has been supremely weird to not at least be on the sidelines at work during this crisis. and I wish my former coworkers all the vibes in their work to share truth. Covering a persistent, pervasive, mutable story is a sort of journalistic death march where the ground heaves beneath you while you get insufficient rest and still debate and refine every word choice. Wishing them all the soups.

Cream of spinach soup

Adapted from Mollie Katzen’s “Soups.” Serves 6 to 8 as a soup plate size serving.

Ingredients

1 large onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
3 cups water
2 teaspoons salt
10-16 ounces of fresh spinach leaves, stems trimmed (I used 2 5-ounce boxes)
5 medium garlic cloves, peeled
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1½ cups hot milk
Pinch of white pepper
Pinch of nutmeg

Method

Place onion, potatoes and salt in a large pot. Add water and bring to a simmer, cooking covered until potatoes are tender. Add spinach and garlic and set aside until cool enough to puree the mixture.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a medium saucepan. Stir in flour and cook a minute. Slowly add milk, whisking as you go. Cook and stir over low heat until mixture is smooth and slightly thickened. It makes a thin white sauce. Stir into pureed vegetable  mixture and heat through before serving.(Alternatively, you can skip the butter and flour step and just stir the hot milk directly into the soup if you want to make it gluten-free.)

Rating: This makes a dandy soup I would make again. Tasty, and a bright, vibrant green. If you were looking for a garnish, maybe a dollop of savory whipped cream would do. It's reminiscent of this heavenly spinach vichyssoise recipe, but heavier on the spinach than the potato. I just used a stick blender, but if I was serving this for company, I'd recommend using a blender or food processor to get a finer texture.

I'm not sure why cabbage gets top billing in this recipe title since zucchini provides the largest share. 

Cabbage-dill potage

From Barbara Kafka's "Soup: A Way of Life," a truly lovely title. Serves 6 to 8 depending on preferred serving size.

Note: The recipe calls for using a zucchini base that you have made ahead in summer during its abundance and stashed in the freezer to pull out one of several soup recipes in the book that utilize it, but you can also just make it at the same time as the soup. Kafka calls for a food mill as the first choice for processing the vegetation, but I don't have one so I stuck with the food processor.

Ingredients
4 medium zucchini
1 tablespoon butter
½ pound mashing potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (about two medium potatoes)
Half a small cabbage, chopped small, about 2 cups
2 large leeks, whites and 1-inch of pale green parts, cleaned and cut into ½-inch pieces
4 cups water
2 tablespoons chopped dill, plus more for optional garnish

Method

Peel zucchini and slice into quarters lengthwise, then ½-inch chunks. Heat butter over low heat in a large saucepan. Toss zucchini with butter, cover and simmer for 45 minutes. At this point you can puree the mixture and freezer it until ready to use, or proceed with the recipe.

Combine potatoes, cabbage, leeks and 4 cups water in a large pot. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, covered. Transfer cooked vegetables to a food processor to puree and then return to liquid in pot along with zucchini puree. If, like me, you're making it all at once, I just added the cooked, chopped zucchini to the soup pot and used a stick blender to mix the entire lot at once. 

Add chopped dill and salt and pepper to taste. (The original recipe called for 5 teaspoons, but I found 3 teaspoons to be a great plenty.) Drizzle with some olive oil if desired and garnish with extra dill.

Rating: Decent soup, flavorwise. Rather thick, but that's not a horrible thing in a soup in January by any means. Like many soups, the flavor improves with time. The zucchini base approach has merit worth revisiting in summer. My version of that is to chop up a zucchini with whatever else is in season and roast them, then freeze 3 to 4 cups of the mixture to add later to a frittata or to mix with beans, broth and pesto for a soup.

Forgot to put on the garnish when I was photographing the leftovers so you'll just have to imagine that bit.

Colorado chicken soup with black beans, corn and pepitas

From "Soup Nights" by Betty Rosbottom. Serves 8 heartily as main dish servings.

Note: Choose the biggest pot you've got for this one. I opted for a pretty big pot, but my Le Creuset #32 Dutch oven (aka Mega Blue)  was barely big enough to contain all of it so I wished I'd chosen the one we refer to as Bigger than Blue.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
⅔ cup chopped celery
½ cup diced carrots
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1½ teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon Spanish smoked paprika
6 cups chicken broth
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes and their juice
1 4-ounce can green chilis
4 cups shredded cooked chicken
2 cups fresh corn kernels, or frozen and thawed

½ cup roasted pepitas, optional
½ cilantro leaves

Method

In really large pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, celery, carrots and garlic and cook until just starting to soften. Add oregano, cumin and paprika and cook for about a minute. Add broth, tomatoes and juices and green chilis. Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Add chicken and corn and heat through.

Optional garnish: Combine pepitas and cilantro in a food processor and use as soup topping. Or just garnish with chopped cilantro.

Rating: If I were to make this soup again, I'd either cut the amount of chicken in half or leave it out altogether. Dave, of course, was fine with the abundance of chicken involved since it made it very filling, but for me, the soup had an odd disconnect between the super thick chicken and beans and the thinness of the broth portion of the soup. I found that when I took bites that didn't have any chicken in it I liked it more, so I think it would make a not bad vegetable bean soup. I would opt for just using chopped cilantro as a garnish next time or else add oil to the pepitas and cilantro to make a pesto; as it is, it didn't really work for me as a garnish. The cilantro flavor is a nice addition, but if you're one of those who finds that off-putting, chopped parsley would do. It is a comparatively fast fix and pantry/freezer friendly, so it has that in its favor.

Soup's on. Stay warm, stay whatever safe looks like to you and carry on. 

Pumpkin soup with maple syrup and five-spice powder

 

While this recipe would make a great fall soup, it did just fine on a day that's rainy and in the 40s. Still in comfort food mode, with a few loaves of real bread rising even now. Because it was that kind of week.

Very simple pumpkin soup

From Bon Appetit ‘s Best Entertaining Recipes compilation. Looks like it dates to August 2004 or so.

Ingredients

2 (15-ounce) cans pumpkin puree
4 cups water
1 cup heavy cream
1 large garlic clove, peeled and pressed
¼ cup maple syrup
4 tablespoons butter, divided
½ teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, sliced

Method

In a large heavy pot, combine pumpkin, water, cream and garlic. Bring mixture to a simmer. Add syrup, 2 tablespoons of butter and the five-spice powder. Simmer another 10 minutes, whisking periodically.

Meanwhile, heat remaining 2 tablespoons butter in a small pan. Cook mushrooms until tender and starting to pick up color. Season soup to taste with salt and pepper. Serve topped with cooked mushrooms for garnish. Serves 6 as a first course.

Rating: This is a lot like pumpkin pie in soup form, so yum. But even if it weren't that tasty, I would make this again just because it's so stinking easy, and very pantry friendly. I used 1 can of pumpkin and one equivalent thereof of pumpkin I'd cooked, pureed and frozen last year. It comes together very quickly with minimal ingredients and dirtying of dishes. It may not be quite as rich tasting as this winter vegetable soup that also uses maple syrup, but if you're looking for a less thick soup for an appetizer, this one would be a decent choice.

If you want to make the soup ahead, just reheat and then finish off by cooking the mushrooms. The soup is fine without the mushrooms, but it does give it a bit of visual interest. If you're among those for whom mushrooms are too slimey, by all means skip them.

Lemony white bean soup two ways, plus lemon garbanzo bean orzo soup with spinach, and chickpea soup with feta and herbed oil

 

If you really like one aspect of a recipe but not another, don't be afraid to take another swing at it until you find something that suits your taste. And test out other recipes of the same vein until you find your favorite. In this case, I wound up in a mini dive into lemony bean soups after trying this recipe from a recent Bon Appetit. This post is all about the marriage of lemons and legumes in soup form.

Lemony white bean soup

Adapted from Bon Appetit, March 2024

Ingredients

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
Zest and juice of 1 lemon, divided
6 garlic cloves, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
8 ounces white beans, soaked overnight and drained
1 quart broth, or more
2 tablespoons butter
Parsley for garnish

Method

Pulse onion, celery, lemon zest and garlic in a food processor until chopped fine. Heat olive oil in a large heavy pot. Cook onion mixture and kosher salt until vegetables soften. Add beans and broth and cook, partially covered, until beans are tender. The original recipe suggests this would take 1 to 1½ hours. Pretty sure it took me nearly 2½ hours and I had to keep adding broth to keep it from turning into just cooked beans, so allow some leeway for both the time and the amount of broth. Add butter and lemon juice and serve garnished with parsley.

Rating: This soup had a nice bright flavor with the lemon, garlic and butter really coming through. But while I liked that aspect, it wasn't going to make it into the keeper pile because of a few knocks against it: There was such a disconnect between the clear broth and the beans with seemingly nothing to tie the two together. Plus, it's not the lookiest of dishes. And it really took a hit on the kitchen time ROI meter, since from start to finish time it takes a lot of cook attention and yielded a very scant 4 servings. If I'm going to spend that much time on a soup, it's good to have the leftovers to make it seem worthwhile.

Still, I really liked that flavor, so I tried again:

Lemony bean soup, Take 2

Note: After soaking beans overnight and draining them, I placed them in a slow cooker with one small onion, quartered, some lemon pepper seasoning and 1 teaspoon salt. I covered the beans with enough water to cover by a couple of inches and cooked them on low for 4 to 6 hours until tender.

Ingredients

2 medium onions, chopped
3 celery sticks, chopped
Zest and juice of 2 lemons, divided
12 garlic cloves, chopped
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
16 ounces white beans, soaked overnight and cooked until tender, divided
1¾ cup broth
2 tablespoons butter
Parsley for garnish

Method

Pulse onions, celery, lemon zest and garlic in a food processor until finely chopped. Heat olive oil in large heavy pot. Cook onion mixture with salt until vegetables are softened. While onions cook, puree 1 cup of the cooked beans in the same food processor bowl. Add beans, bean puree and broth to pot and cook for 30 minutes to allow flavors to blend. Add butter and lemon juice and salt and lemon pepper to taste. Serve garnished with parsley.

Rating: This was fine out of the gate, but absolutely stellar the next day when flavors had time to blend and it brought out the amazing double zing of lemon and garlic. The slight added creaminess of pureed beans tied it together nicely, and making the beans ahead and then just adding them to the soup when I was ready to make it made my perceived invested time factor go way down. Yes, I know you have to cook the beans in advance, but in a slow cooker I barely have to pay attention so I can mentally discount that effort, so for me it counts as less time. Plus, it serves 8 quite reasonably.

Note: That method of prepping the veggies in the processor was pretty slick.

Lemon chickpea orzo soup

Adapted from the Simple Veganista

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ medium onion, diced

3 carrots, peeled and diced

3 large garlic cloves, minced

7 to 8 cups broth, water and/or liquid drained from chickpeas

1 cup orzo

⅓ cup tahini

Juice of 2 to 3 lemons

Large handful of spinach

Chopped fresh dill

Method

Heat oil over medium heat. Cook onion and carrots until onion has softened. Add garlic and cook a minute more. Add the broth and/or water. Bring to a boil. Stir in orzo and garbanzo beans. Reduce heat and boil gently until orzo is tender. (I found it took close to 15 minutes.)

Turn off heat. Stir in tahini and lemon juice to taste. Add spinach and stir to wilt. Add fresh dill to taste and season with salt and pepper. Serves 8 reasonably well.

Rating: Quite nice, and no significant tinkering needed. I had wound up accidentally upping the tahini amount because I got a bit carried away when measuring and was too lazy to try to feed it back into the jar. Definitely better looking than the other bean soup, with more cheerful color to help counteract winter on a day when we woke up to fresh snow, it started snowing at 10 a.m., and wasn't forecast to stop for a full day. There's a nice creaminess from the tahini, color from the carrots and spinach, and just a slight bit of heft from the orzo. Better ROI on kitchen time, since it relies on canned chickpeas, which in this case was just fine.

Note: Like most soups with pasta, this one tightens up a bit as leftovers, so you may want a tad more broth on hand for reheating. I used the tiniest of orzo varieties, and it didn't really need more liquid since it loosened up once heated through, but you might if you use the standard size orzo.

Chickpea soup with herb oil and feta

Adapted from “Eating the Greek Way,” by Dr. Fedon Alexander Lindberg

Ingredients

1¾ cup garbanzo beans
1 large onion, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
¼ cup olive oil
1 large handful of mixed herbs (I used parsley, lemon balm, thyme, tarragon and oregano)
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Feta chunks for garnish

Method

Soak beans in enough water to cover overnight. Drain and rinse.

Heat olive oil in a large heavy pot over medium low heat. Cook until onions are softened. Add drained beans and add enough water to cover by 2 inches. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until chickpeas are tender. The recipe suggested about 1½ hours. I cooked them for 2¼ and in retrospect wished I’d cooked them even longer, so allow plenty of time.

Mix cornstarch and lemon juice in a small bowl. Stir into soup and add parsley. Remove a couple of large ladles of the soup to a glass bowl. Process with a stick blender until it’s sort of pulpy-chunky. Stir back into soup.

To make herb oil, in a small food processor or blender, combine olive oil, herbs and Parmesan to make a loose pesto.

Serve soup garnished with feta chunks and a swirl of the herb oil. Serves 6-ish as a side, 4 as a main course.

Rating: Nice flavor, although not as brightly lemony as the other two, despite using lemon balm in the herb mix. It's fairly mild, and I did wonder whether I might have liked garlic in the herb oil, but there's really nothing wrong with it as is. The feta and herb oil work well with it and make it a bit lookier than it would be otherwise. My only real nit was that the soup really could have benefited from softer chickpeas than I achieved in a rather lengthy cooking time. They certainly yielded to a fork test, but this soup really needs them to be on softer side. Tempted to try making this into a crockpot recipe so I can more readily outwait it.

To be clear, I would be happy to be presented with any of these bowls of soup, but in some cases I might be happier if I didn't have to make it. 

Kielbasa sauerkraut soup with wild mushrooms

 

Fresh wild mushrooms are definitely not free, so I only tend to buy them for a specific recipe .... which I then do not make. Usually they're called for in some recipe that I don't have time or energy for at the point I would have intended to cook it. So if I'm half on the ball, the mushrooms get repurposed for something else before they go bad. If I'm not, it's some expensive compost fodder.

This recipe is so simple it really shouldn't have triggered that reaction. But it did. Three times. My ability to muster the energy and attention to cook a new recipe, and thus blog about it, is a pretty reliable indicator of how my life is going. For several months, mine was kind of off the rails working 12-hour days during the work week and several hours on weekends and faux vacations/holidays.

I'm not completely out of the woods yet workwise, but I finally had time for this recipe that comes together in less than an hour. Handy, since winter finally decided to reassert itself, and this helps take the edge off after a commute where people don't seem to remember where the lanes were the day before.

Polish hunter's stew

Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens, December 2023. I'd link to it online, but I can't find it on their site. Serves 4 passably well.

Ingredients

14-ounce kielbasa, sliced into ½-inch pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil
8 ounces mixed wild mushrooms
1 cup chopped onion
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons tomato puree
3 cups water
2 cups sauerkraut
½ teaspoon dried dill
Fresh dill for optional garnish

Method

Heat olive oil in a large deep skillet. Brown kielbasa. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add mushrooms, onion and salt to the pan. Cook, stirring often, until tender and the onion has started to pick up a bit of color. Add tomato paste and cook for 1 minute. Add water, sauerkraut and dill. Return kielbasa to the pan. Cover and simmer 15 minutes to allow mixture to heat through and flavors to blend. Serve topped with fresh dill leaves if desired.

Rating: Very hearty. Decent flavor, providing you like kielbasa, which is mainly what it tastes of. Not too time consuming to fix. Aside from the mushrooms, it's relatively pantry friendly, since the rest of the ingredients have staying power and you don't even have to have a decent broth on standby. I opted to add dried dill to the soup, since I had no fresh on hand, it not being summer when I'm overrun with it. I could see making it again the next time I want to play fresh mushroom roulette.

Curried peanut butter buttermilk soup

 

Sadly, it is definitely still soup weather here. We woke up to snow (again!?) with a forecast of more possible tonight and 20 degrees windchill. By mid-afternoon the second snowy wind arrived. This after it got up to 88 degrees on Wednesday. Another case of weather whiplash, only partially treatable by soup.

Curried peanut soup
Adapted from "Mollie Katzen’s Recipes:Soups,” that cute little ring-bound flippy book that has its own built-in easel to stand up on the counter. I was intrigued by this recipe that could be said to riff on peanut butter banana sandwiches.

Ingredients
1 cup plain peanut butter (I took plain to mean creamy rather than chunky style)
2 tablespoons honey
4 cups boiling water, divided
2 teaspoons peanut oil
2 cups minced onion
10 large garlic cloves, minced (no really, you can’t even detect it when it’s done)
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons turmeric
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon dry mustard
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground cayenne (or less, depending on your heat preference)
2 cups buttermilk, room temperature

Method
Combine peanut butter, honey and 2 cups boiling water in a large bowl. Whisk until smooth. Whisk in remaining boiling water and set aside.

Heat 2 teaspoons peanut oil in a large saucepan. Add onions, garlic, ginger and salt and cook 10 minutes over medium heat, stirring often. Add cumin, turmeric, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, mustard, cloves and cayenne and cook another 5 minutes. Stir in peanut butter mixture. Bring to a simmer and cook, covered, for 20 minutes. Stir in buttermilk and serve with banana topping if desired.

For the optional banana topping
This called for three bananas. I just tried it with one, and I think three would be overkill in any case.
1 banana, sliced ¼-inch thick on the diagonal
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon peanut oil
Cinnamon, salt

Place banana in a shallow dish. Drizzle with lemon juice and let stand for 10 minutes. Heat 1 teaspoon peanut oil in a small skillet. Cook bananas with the lemon juice for a minute over medium heat until it just picks up a bit of color. Flip over and cook the other side. (The recipe said not to worry if they lost their shape since they would mainly disappear into the soup anyway, which was my first clue that this wasn’t really garnish material.) Dust with cinnamon and a tiny pinch of salt. 

Rating: As Dave points out, peanuts are really legumes, so it's not that odd to make them into a soup, but it's still horizon-expanding about what can be called a soup. The spice combo gives it really nice flavor; I could see poaching that for other applications. The texture was just ever so slightly grainy, perhaps because I used fresh peanut butter. It's fairly pantry friendly, providing yours is stocked with that many spices.

Now about that garnish: Don't bother. The bananas instantly sink to the bottom of the bowl so it's not so much a garnish as a vanish, and I don't really think they brought anything to the party.