Just because it’s 27C outside, that doesn’t mean I can’t have soup for lunch does it? Nope, thought not. I’d recently bought The Bean Book by Rose Elliot (it’s been in my wishlist for ages after reading all the great reviews on amazon) and made myself some butter bean and tomato soup.
And very nice it was too. Although I did have a dilemma at the end – to blend or not to blend? I decided to blend as I do like a one-handed soup, leaving my other hand free to mouse around the internet with.
All the recipes in the book use dried beans but you can substitute 100g of dried beans for a 400g tin. In the recipe below, I’ve used tinned beans and left out the soaking, draining, rinsing and boiling malarkey.
For a vegan version, fry the onions in oil instead of butter.
Butter bean and tomato soup (serves 4)
(Taken from The Bean Book by Rose Elliot)
2 tins butter beans, drained
900ml/1.5 pints vegetable stock
1 bayleaf
2 large onions, sliced
25g/1oz/2tbsp butter
1 can chopped tomatoes
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Fry the onions in the butter until soft – about 10 minutes – then add the beans, tomatoes, salt and pepper.
Bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.
If you’re going to blend it, remember to remove the bayleaf.
4 comments
I have a second hand old edition of this book. Glad for the reminder, as there are a number of good old beany brews in there that I’d like to try. I will definitely make this once I’ve got some butterbeans, but probably won’t blend! And yes to soup in summer. I like autumnal foods all year round to be truthful!!
It was a hard decision to make, to blend or not. Next time I won’t blend and see how that turns out.
I am pinching that recipe – I love soup
It is really nice, and I had all the ingredients in so I didn’t even need to buy anything.