Hearty 3 Bean Soup
Vegan • Gluten-Free • Sugar-Free • Soy-Free
Another happy kitchen accident. I was a little under the weather earlier this week. My Dad has influenza and despite our effort to disinfect everything, the germs are spreading. Thankfully my body is fighting it pretty well, but it needed a little help.
It needed soup! My extremities were frozen despite the multiple layers of clothing and hoodies, and the cups of hot tea weren’t helping. Unfortunately I didn’t have much in the fridge in the way of soup ingredients, so into the pantry I went, grabbing jars of whatever I felt went together. My pantry is basically a whole lot of shelves lined with mason jars (labelled or course) filled with dried beans, grains, flours, and spices. A well stocked pantry just makes it a whole lot easier to throw together simple meals.
Lentils, hearty adzuki beans, split peas… The great thing about adzuki beans is that they don’t need to be soaked and cook up relatively quickly compared to most beans. So in they went, along with some brown rice. Now, I have a tendency to overcook rice in soup. I wait for it to get really plump, until it no longer resembles rice, and the starch thickness the soup slightly. I know that’s not how you’re supposed to cook it, but I can’t help it. That just the way I like my soup, hopefully there are some other weirdos out there that can relate.
Anyways, I loved the soup so much that I rushed to my computer to type it up. I even pulled out my camera and grabbed a couple of quick shots. I hadn’t intended on sharing a soup recipe today, but then I thought…
Everyone seems to be sick… colds, flu, winter blues… they need soup.
And then I looked at my phone and the snow storm that is about to hit the North-East (in March, hence more winter blues), and thought… they’ll need soup too. And if you’re neither in the North-East, nor sick, I’m sure you can find a reason of your own to need a hot bowl of hearty bean soup.
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
- 2 large carrots, scrubbed and diced
- 3 celery stalks, diced
- ½ cup dried green lentils, picked over and rinsed
- ½ cup dried adzuki beans, picked over and rinsed
- ¼ cup dried yellow split peas
- ¼ cup long grain brown rice, picked over and rinsed
- 2 bay leaves
- 6 cups vegetable stock *See notes
- ¼ teaspoon liquid smoke (optional)
- 3 cups baby spinach
- Salt & pepper to taste
- In a large soup pot, heat the coconut oil over medium heat.
- Add the diced onion and sauté until translucent. Add the minced garlic and cook for about 1 minute until fragrant.
- Stir in the celery and carrots and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.
- Add the green lentils, adzuki bean, split peas, rice, and bay leaves. Cover with the vegetable stock and bring to a simmer.
- Simmer partially covered until the beans are tender and the rice plump, about 20-25 minutes.
- Once cooked stir in the liquid smoke if using.
- Add the spinach and stir until wilted. Season to taste with salt and pepper, adding water if too thick.
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