Italian-Style White Bean & Kale Soup
Last week I bought a bag of kale at the farmer’s market. I buy vegetables every week and I struggle to eat them. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that alone they aren’t all that delicious raw. A personal challenge I have this year is to find different and delicious ways to cook vegetables so that someone like me who’s motivated but unimpressed, will eat more plants.
Until I learned how to properly cook brussel sprouts, I didn’t eat them. Now I can barely finish cooking dinner before they’re all eaten. I think a lot of vegetables are like this; a bit of a disgusting mystery until discovered by the right technique.
The story about this soup is a long-winded way of saying it’s a tasty way to use up that damn kale using just pantry ingredients. This soup isn’t based on anyone’s recipe, just one I made up using a series of techniques I’ve previously applied while making soups.
On a side note, the technique of caramelizing the onions and garlic slowly with S&P and Italian seasoning, then mixed with the Italian stewed tomatoes was a really, really tasty sauce before I added broth. This is a note for the future if I’m ever out of pasta sauce and need some in a pinch, that I could make it relatively quickly using these pantry ingredients.
For future me, here’s the ingredients and recipe.
Ingredients:
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 2 medium-sized garlic cloves, finely diced
- Italian seasoning, enough to coat the onion/to taste
- Olive oil
- 1.5 bay leaves
- 3 cups vegetable broth
- 1 15oz. can of cannelloni beans
- 1 15oz. can of Italian stewed tomatoes
- 2 cups of purple/green (bitter) kale, chopped
- S&P to taste
Recipe:
- Slow saute the onions, along with S&P and Italian seasoning over low-medium heat in the olive oil. Add the garlic when the onions are almost done caramelizing. Avoid burning the onions and garlic.
- Stir in the Italian stewed tomatoes and allow to reach a boil. Turn down and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Add the broth, beans, bay leaves and stir. Allow to simmer for 5 minutes.
- Scoop out about two cups worth avoiding the tomatoes and blenderize using a stick blender. Return mixture to soup and stir in.
- Add the kale and bring to a boil.
- Take off the heat and enjoy!