Last Updated on September 17, 2024 by HodgePodgeDays
I’ve been making this soup for the last couple of years, it doesn’t have an especially inspiring name, but it is so flipping lovely. I make it when I’m starting to feel rundown, or when the weather is changing for the worse and I need a winter warmer. It’s a simple soup, but one even my teenager really loves.
I call it double bean soup because I use two tins of beans in it, usually butter beans or cannellini, sometimes white kidneys beans or occasionally I’ll throw in a tin of chickpeas. My favourite combo is butter beans and cannellini though.
It’s got a hearty vegetable base, and it’s so packed with good stuff, you can stretch it out a little if need be by adding more stock and seasoning, but it makes a big pot, a really big pot, perfect for lunch for a crowd or freezing for future rainy days.
This simple soup is pretty quick to throw together, but it does benefit from a gentle simmer once you get going. There’s a fair amount of chopping, but once that’s done and dusted, the hardest part is opening the tins of beans.
Double Bean Soup
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 large onion, finely diced
3 sticks of celery, finely diced
2 or 3 medium carrots, finely diced
1 courgette, finely diced (optional)
3 large cloves of garlic, more if you fancy it
1 tin of butter beans
1 tin of cannellini beans, or whatever white beans you like
2 tablespoons of tomato purée
500mls of vegetable stock
Salt & pepper
Dried Italian herbs, about a heaped teaspoon
Paprika, about half a teaspoon
1 teaspoon of red wine vinegar
Pesto to serve
Optional additions – chopped fresh or frozen spinach, chopped fresh parsley
How to make double bean soup –
Swirl some olive oil to a large pan or soup pot. Add your finely diced onions, celery, carrots and courgettes, cook until they’re soft but not brown, this might take around 20 mins.
Throw in your crushed garlic and cook that out for a few minutes. Add your two tins of beans, tomato purée and hot stock. You can always add more stock later, but 500mls should be enough to get the soup party started.
Set your soup pan to a gentle simmer and add salt and pepper, dried herbs, paprika and the red wine vinegar. Leave it to simmer for about half an hour. At this point, add a generous spoon of your favourite green pesto and stir through.
Now is the time to have a taste to check you’re happy with the seasoning. If you’re not, please add more of whatever you think it needs. Occasionally I might add a pinch of sugar if it feels too acidic, but usually I end up adding more pepper and that’s about it. If you’re adding chopped spinach, throw that in now and stir until it’s wilted and it all looks good.
To serve, pour into soup bowls, top with a bit more pesto and/or chopped parsley and serve with crusty bread.
It’s a big bowl of health and vitality, and just the thing to serve on a chilly autumnal day.
If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also like this Norwegian inspired cauliflower cheese soup.
