Rosemary White Bean Soup

 

Ina Garten.  Her food looks so good.  The first time I saw her show Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network, she was preparing (if I remember correctly), a roasted chicken for her husband Jeffrey.  I don’t even really enjoy chicken (at least when I cook it), but seeing hers made my mouth water.  You’re a lucky man, Jeff.

It looked so simple, and so tasty.  I was excited to learn, upon browsing the Internet, that she is a purveyor of one of my favorite kinds of food: comfortable classics—think pot roast, simple roasted asparagus, eggs Benedict—done really well, with good ingredients, and maybe modernized a little. 

I perused the sample recipes on her website, and tucked one away in my bookmarks folder for a chilly day.

The Recipe

Rosemary White Bean Soup, Ina Garten, a.k.a. Barefoot Contessa

Apprehension Meter

After reading the ingredient list and even the instructions to this recipe, you’d think that the meter would read at a low to very low for this recipe.  On the other hand, if you’re me and you failed miserably at your first attempt at bean soup not even two weeks ago, the meter spikes a little, and settles at a medium. 

Perhaps the only thing that helped me actually go forth with this recipe was that there was an alternative method to soaking the beans.  This method seemed easier (and quicker), and more or less promised that I wouldn’t end up with a bowl full of stinky, sprouted, uncooked beans.  

Bean soup, take two.

Here’s How It Really Went

Aside from ending up with a fairly messy kitchen and a bleeding thumb, I’d say it went pretty smoothly. 

Before taking a nearly six hour bath in the fridge
 

While the beans drained and rested, I began slicing and sautéing the onions and olive oil.  Since the soup would be making a trip to the food processor later, I didn’t bother slicing the onions very small, or uniform for that matter.  That’s one thing I love about blended soups—you don’t really have to worry about chopping and dicing as much.

As I was making a conscious effort to follow the recipe, I sautéed them on low to medium heat for about 15 minutes.  The way the onions slowly softened and became slightly translucent made me aware that I usually use way too high of heat when sautéing onions.  This, apparently, is the secret to nice, soft, sautéed onions. 

These may have been my best sauteed onions ever.  It was as simple as following the directions...

Next came the chicken broth, the beans, rosemary, and bay leaf.  And that was it.  So easy.  I brought everything up to a boil, then set the alarm on my cell phone (I need to just suck it up and buy a kitchen timer) for 40 minutes. 

Warmth, in a stock pot 

The rosemary and chicken broth, as it simmered on my stove, almost instantly made my apartment smell so homey and comforting.  There’s something about the combination of the two that make you want to snuggle up in a blanket with wool socks on and smile.  I thought to myself, in 40 minutes I’ll be enjoying a delicious, healthy, simple, Ina Garten soup.  Yum.

Try making that almost an hour and a half .  I checked the beans and I checked them again, and not until almost 90 minutes had elapsed was I satisfied with their consistency.  I’m not sure what Ina does differently, perhaps she soaks them overnight, or at least for the full six hours instead of five hours and fifty minutes?  I’ll never know for sure. 

One (sort of) laughable but frustrating moment was when it was time to remove the rosemary sprig before transferring the soup to the food processor.  I fished out the sprig with a slotted spoon, only to find out that all of its little rosemary “leaves” had fallen off into the soup.  Now what, Ina? 

I spent a considerable amount of time grabbing them out one by one with a pair of tongs.  In retrospect, I probably should have just left them in; the soup was prettier with a little green in it. 

Just a few pulses creates a creamy but chunky texture.

After two messy trips from the soup pot to the food processor and back, the soup was nearly complete, just getting its final sprinkle of salt and pepper.

If only the final product—the reward—would have been a little better.

The Verdict

It smelled good.  It even looked pretty good.  But it tasted… alright.  I liked the texture (only pulsing the soup a few times so that you have somewhat whole beans and a thicker broth), and it certainly felt thick and hearty enough for a chilly November night.  But it was lacking in flavor.  Maybe this was because I used low sodium chicken broth.  Or maybe because 90% of the ingredients are white beans.  

Anyhow, this recipe might be good as the first course of a winter dinner party (if you’re chic enough to do that kind of thing), but it’s not something I’d recommend making just for yourself, because by day four, you’re pretty sick of it, no matter how inexpensive it was or how good it made your apartment smell.

Bean Soup

I’ve been in a sustainable mood lately, not wanting to waste anything- and that would include food and money.  I’ve also had a little free time on my hands the past few days, so I thought I would finally tackle that big, old, ugly bag of assorted dried beans that have been in the back of my cupboard for two apartments now.  Hey, I thought, I can save a little money on my groceries by using things I already have, and I can try out a new recipe!

If only I had known…

 Beans- full of FIBER, according to the packaging

The Recipe

16 Bean Soup, from…me (I was going for creative, you see)

Apprehension Meter

Even though bean soup, to most cooks, is probably child’s play, I was pretty apprehensive about this one.  I never liked those beans from the start, sitting there, getting all dusty in the back of my cupboard.  They took up precious space, but I couldn’t bare to throw them away because there wasn’t anything wrong with them.

One thing in particular that I was a little wary of was having to soak the beans overnight before cooking them.  Having never cooked with dried beans before, I trusted the instructions on the bag, but was still a little dubious.

On top of using these strange dried beans, I was going to have to figure out how to make this soup taste good, all on my own.  Talk about pressure.

Here’s How It Really Went

You’d better sit down for this one.

It all started innocently enough.  I filled a bowl with 8 cups of cold water, and poured the beans into the bowl.  They instantly became more appealing once out of the old, dusty plastic bag that housed them for the past two years.  They looked like little beads at the bottom of a fish bowl, most sinking to the bottom but some floating on the top.

Goodnight, little guys

Satisfied with my progress thus far, I put them aside and went to bed.

I awoke the next morning later than planned, so they had soaked for about 9 ½ hours, instead of the recommended 6-8.  I examined them, and they looked fine.  They had almost doubled in size, which I was expecting.  I drained the beans, and put them back into the bowl, covered them with tin foil, and headed to the gym. 

Well, the gym led to a trip to Caribou Coffee, which led to a trip to The Gap, whereupon I received a phone call from a friend who was in the neighborhood, whom I met for another coffee at Caribou, where we heard about a Halloween parade that was taking place up the street in approximately one hour, which we had to attend, which, in short, turned out to be mostly men dressed as various versions of Lady Gaga, strutting down Halsted (unfortunately I didn’t see anyone wearing my favorite most ridiculous Lady Gaga outfit).

Anyway.  By the time I got home, it was nearly 7:30pm.  I had been planning on making chili for dinner (the bean soup was going to be an afternoon project), and I had a pound of hamburger thawed and ready to go that I couldn’t let wait another day.  So, I set the beans aside again, with the intention of making my delicious soup the next evening.

Well. 

I learned something new.

When you cover damp beans and let them sit out for about 30 hours, guess what happens.

They begin to sprout. 

I didn’t bother to do any research on this phenomenon, and assumed that it’s not wise (or tasty) to eat sprouted beans.  I could be wrong, maybe they were fine, but there’s something creepy about the way the little white sprout twisted crookedly out of the bean, like some kind of antennae.

I discovered this after work the following day, when I eagerly checked on them, ready to dump them into a pot of vegetable stock to begin the cooking process. 

Disgusted but determined to succeed, I began going through the beans and picking out the sprouted ones by hand.  Not all of them had sprouted, you see, just certain varieties.  And they didn’t smell good.  I'd pick out the bad ones, toss them on the foil, and toss the good ones into the soup pot.  The work was tedious and unrewarding, and upon the discovery of a slimey substance at the bottom of the bowl, I called it quits.

6 cups of vegetable stock and a bag of beans down the drain (figuratively speaking).  Two cans of diced tomatoes and an onion with nowhere to go.  Three potential meals, gone.  Tragic.

So, I ate one of these, instead.