Easy White Bean Soup with Wild Garlic Pesto

I made this recipe for lunch yesterday and shared it in my Story on Instagram (it’s now in this highlight), it was so delicious that I had to save it more permanently on here too. I find that having the recipe written down in one spot is handy for myself looking back at what I’ve done before and I hope for you too when you want to follow it.

This was a recipe originally inspired by this recipe from NYT - one that I saw on Instagram a few weeks ago and couldn’t quite get out of my head! Of course, we are incapable of following a recipe so we gave it our own twist and this is what we did.

We soaked our beans overnight, and cooked them in our Instant Pot* - which we love! Soaking beans is essential in my opinion, it makes them far more digestible, but also more nutritious. You could cook yours in a normal pot, it might just take longer OR if you’re not feeling it, just use good quality canned or jarred cooked beans! (if using canned beans go straight to step 6)

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Ingredients :

For the Beans :

• 500 g of dried beans soaked overnight

• 1 carrot

• 1 celery stalk

• 1 onion or shallot

• 15-20 peppercorns

• 1 bay leaf

• 1 organic lemon peel

• 5 cloves

• 2 tsp of sea salt

• water or veggie stock

For the soup :

• 5 cloves of garlic

• 1 to 2 cups of the bean cooking broth (or veggie stock if using tinned beans)

• olive oil

• wild garlic pesto (see recipe here)

Method :

1. Rinse your beans well, and discard the soaking water.

2. Place in your instant pot with all the remaining ingredients: carrot, celery, onion/shallot, cloves, peppercorns, lemon peel, bay leaf, salt, water or veggie stock to about an inch over the beans.

3. Cook them on high pressure in your IP for 6min.

4. Once they’re done, do a quick release.

5. Carefully strain your beans, reserve the cooking broth and remove the aromatics (you can keep these in the broth for extra flavour if you want).

6. On medium heat in a large pot, add your olive oil and crushed garlic, sautee the garlic until it starts getting golden.

7. Add your beans to the pot, mix well, then set half of the beans on one side of the pot, and mash the other half roughly with the bag of a fork/spoon.

8. At this stage, add in 1 or 2 cups of the delicious bean broth or veggie stock to your pot, and mix well. Let it all cook for a few mins, or until the broth gets a little thicker and creamier from the mashed beans.

9. Taste test and add more salt/pepper if needed.

10. Serve in bowls, with a drizzle of wild garlic pesto or just basil pesto (you can use my recipe to make normal pesto, just replace the wild garlic with basil), a drizzle of olive oil and some toasted sourdough bread. Bon appétit!

ps: use your extra cooking broth for soups etc, it’s delicious and acts as veggie stock!

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