2010 Healthy Recipes, Week #5

I was inspired reading a friends post on facebook last week about Bean & Bacon soup. I remember as a kid I liked eating that Campbell's stuff. I'll even admit that I didn't even reconstitute the soup sometimes. I'd just eat it by the spoonful directly out of the can, getting that hydrogenated bacony taste, alongside a bunch of other things in that can that I'm sure aren't necessarily good for me. Anyways, I've wanted to find a suitable recipe to in essence "re-create" that Bean & Bacon Soup.

In the last catalog I received from Williams & Sonoma, one of the pages selling Le Creuset cookware and immersion blenders, had a recipe for White Bean Soup. It was made with cannellini beans and pancetta. It sounded promising. After reading all the ingredients I decided to give it a try, adjusting just a few things mainly out of laziness because it was late last night. We had already been to the gym for what seemed like five hours, it was getting late and I just wanted to get dinner made and not make another trip to the grocery store for speciality ingredients.

While I love pancetta and/or bacon, it's not necessarily the best thing for you. So I adjusted the recipe and used some organic chicken sausages that are flavored with garlic and gruyere. I sliced those on a bias and seared them off in the pan then added the vegetables so it would pick up some of the meat flavor. I then reserved the seared meat for a garnish.

Also, the sludge that exists in canned vegetable products is pretty gross in my opinion, even if you rinse them off. I always buy organic canned vegetables now and the "solution" is basically just water and you don't have that slime or other stabilizers or preservatives in it. Enough about my picky food preferences. I drained the beans, and reserved one half of one of the cans, so some of the cannellini beans could be stirred in whole for additional texture. I also doubled the amount of onion, carrot, garlic and celery to ensure it had a complex flavor base before it was pureed. The result was extremely satisfying.



Bean & Bacon Soup Redux

1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for brushing
3 chicken sausages cut on a bias
1 sweet onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalk, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 cans (each 15 oz.) cannellini beans, drained
4 cups chicken stock
3/4 tsp. finely chopped fresh thyme
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

In a 3 1/2-quart Dutch oven over medium heat, warm 2 Tbs. of the olive oil. Add the sausages or pancetta and cook, stirring occasionally, until crispy, about 5 to 10 minutes. Remove the cooked meat. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to soften, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the cannellini beans, broth and thyme and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat. Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until smooth. Stir in the cheese and season with salt and black pepper. Immediately ladle into bowls and serve. Garnish the bowls with the seared meat, reserved whole beans and additional fresh thyme.