Tuscan Bean Soup

A first look through this recipe and it seems, well, just a bit dull, but somehow these flavours work amazingly well together. Tuscan bean soup is one of my all time favourite soups, full of flavour, filling, wholesome, it keeps well, both in the fridge and the freezer, and it's fairly economical. What's not to love!

 

For the Tuscan Bean soup, you will need:

For the roasted tomatoes (if in a hurry, tinned tomatoes could be used)

1 kilo tomatoes 

For the stock

A handful of dried mushrooms

1 onion

3 bay leaves

10 peppercorns

celery offcuts

leek offcuts

For the soup

2 onions

A few sticks of celery

A leek

A tablespoon butter

A tablespoon olive oil

3 cloves garlic

Two or three stalks of rosemary 

Paprika

Beans - tinned (butter beans or a selection - either works well) or dried, soaked and cooked

One savoy cabbage

Cut the top off the tomatoes and roast them for 2 hours.

Make the stock by adding all the ingredients to a pan of water and bring to the boil. Simmer for around one hour (the stock ingredients can be pureed into another soup after).

Saute the onions, leeks and celery in butter and olive oil. 

Once soft, add garlic, paprika and finely chopped rosemary. (Rosemary can be frozen without any great impact on the flavour, just wash it and freeze it). 

Boil for about 20 minutes then add the  tomatoes (I prefer roasted tomatoes, but tinned ones will do) and stock which we'd made from dried mushrooms, onions, garlic and bay leaves. Chicken stock works well too. Once it was boiling, we added beans - we used a mixture of different beans, but any will work, and a finely shredded savoy cabbage. 

Once back to the boil, it's ready to eat.
 It also freezes well.