Winter Bean Soup
Here’s a soup to warm your heart even on the bleakest day of winter. Use it as a guideline, and make your own innovations according to what you have on hand. The beans are very nourishing, the meat accent lends heartiness, and the greens are healthy, giving balance and color. It’s interesting how cooks of the past just knew these things instinctively.
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Melt the butter in a small pot, and add the onion and potato. Sauté for a few minutes, and pour in the broth. Simmer for 30 minutes, covered. Add the greens during the last 5 minutes of cooking, as well as the dried beans. Stir in the sausage at the end, and heat through.
Step 2
Serve in a big soup bowl with croutons and some (optional) Parmesan floating on top.
Variations
Step 3
If you don’t have any sausage, use some meat scraps—leftover lamb or pork or dark poultry meat. Instead of cooked dried beans, which you may not have stashed away, try fresh fava beans. You have to shuck them and then peel off the skins of the beans, but you’ll only need about a dozen for this soup, so it’s not that hard—another advantage of cooking just for one.
