Vegetable Bean Soup
From Everyday Food December 2011 Recipe calls for diced tomatoes. I switched it up to fire-roasted diced tomatoes
From Everyday Food December 2011 Recipe calls for diced tomatoes. I switched it up to fire-roasted diced tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley chopped
- parmesan cheese for serving
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- fresh ground pepper
- coarse salt
- 4 cups vegetable broth
- 2 medium carrots diced small
- 2 stalks celery diced small
- 1 medium onion diced small
- 3 cloves garlic diced small
- 2 15 1/2 ounce cans cannellini beans rinsed and drained
- 2 14 1/2 ounc cans fire roasted diced tomatoes
- Carbohydrate 8.6661978759242 g
- Cholesterol 0 mg
- Fat 1.91514273537037 g
- Fiber 1.70913123633592 g
- Protein 1.02810915092982 g
- Saturated Fat 0.274891016328088 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (312g)
- Sodium 4082.34967811393 mg
- Sugar 6.95706663958827 g
- Trans Fat 0.106172659512741 g
- Calories 53 calories
Step-by-step
- Heat oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add carrots, celery and onion and cook until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and thyme. Season with salt and pepper; cook until fragrant, another 3 minutes.
- Add beans, tomatoes, broth and parsley. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with parmesan cheese on top.
Home cooks frequently crowd the pot with unevenly chopped root vegetables, causing certain pieces to turn to mush while adjacent chunks remain stubbornly crunchy. Achieving uniform softening requires dicing carrots, celery, and onions to roughly equal dimensions, typically one-quarter inch, so that thermal energy penetrates the cell walls at an identical rate across all pieces. Heavy-bottomed enameled cast iron distributes heat evenly across the base, preventing the hot spots that scorch garlic and dried thyme during the initial eight-minute sauté phase.
Fat acts as a crucial thermal conductor when sweating aromatics over medium heat, coating the exterior of the vegetables to transfer energy efficiently from the metal surface directly into the plant tissues. Keeping the heat moderate rather than high ensures the onion translucent stage happens without browning the sugars, preserving a clean background flavor before the broth and fire-roasted tomatoes are introduced. Once the liquids are added, bringing the pot to a rapid boil before immediately reducing the setting to a gentle simmer establishes the correct convection currents needed to cook the cannellini beans uniformly.
Maintaining a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil prevents the delicate cannellini beans from splitting apart and releasing too much starch into the broth, which would transform a clear soup into a thick purée. Canellini skins protect the interior starches, but aggressive agitation breaks those outer membranes long before the thirty-minute simmering window concludes. Monitoring the pot closely during this final phase guarantees that the root vegetables achieve tenderness without losing their structural integrity entirely.
Storing leftovers properly relies on rapid cooling techniques to keep the starch molecules from retrograding into an unappealing graininess. Transferring the pot into an ice-water bath before refrigeration brings the internal temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit quickly, inhibiting bacterial growth while preserving the distinct textures of the beans and tomatoes for up to four days.
