When I say hearty... I mean... well... you won't need to eat anything else ALL DAY! I'm not even sure this meal should be classified as a soup, rather than a stew or a pasta with sauce.Minestrone Pasta Sauce - now there's an idea!
It's not stew or sauce.
It's soup.
It's rather hugely wonderful - and when covered in a grated, gooey layer of cheddar, it's divine. I know. Anything covered in a grated, gooey layer of cheddar - is divine.
I try to always make enough to have oodles of this in my freezer, because it's the type of soup that when you're not quite hungry enough for a large dinner - this makes the perfect substitute. I never, ever experience hunger pangs of any kind, when I make this soup a part of my day. It doesn't need bread, it has pasta and beans in it - bread (even croutons) would spoil the ambiance.
Cheese is a necessity though. It's in the rules.
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Serves 8 - 10Prep time - 10 - 15 minutes
Cooking time - 40 minutes
You will need
A HUMUNGOUS saucepan...
HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE.
...or a medium sized one if you decide to halve the recipe.
Ingredients
3 large carrots - peeled and roughly chopped
4 sticks celery - roughly chopped
1 large onion - roughly chopped
1 very large potato - peeled (optional) and roughly chopped
2 fat cloves of garlic - crushed
400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato puree
1.8L vegetable stock - from a cube is fine
100g spaghetti - broken into pieces
400g tin butter beans - drained
Seasoning
Grated cheese (Parmesan or cheddar - or whatever takes your fancy) to serve
Method
You can either blitz the vegetables, using the pulse setting, in a food processor - or roughly chop them by hand. Put all of the vegetables, plus the garlic and 2 tbsp olive oil into the HUUUUUUUUGE saucepan and cook over a low to medium heat, with the lid on, for about 10 minutes - making sure to give it the occasional stir.
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Add the tin of chopped tomatoes, tomato puree and the vegetable stock and bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for another 10 minutes.
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Add the broken spaghetti and cook for a further 10 minutes. Then add the butter beans and cook until heated through and slightly soft. About 5 minutes. Season to taste.
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Serve scattered with your choice of cheese.
EAT
NOTE: Already mentioned it - but this soup is great to portion up and freeze.
Barely adapted from Good Food Magazine .
Can I replace the beans with something else *flirty eyes*?
ReplyDeleteNo. Eat your beans. They're good for you :p
DeleteIf you absolutely WON'T eat your beans... I suppose you could stick your beloved croutons in there somewhere *rolls eyes*.
Made this at the weekend. Butter beans are like hen's teeth here, so did a little Google search and now know they are also called lima beans. Very smug when I found a tin at the supermarket! However, having added them 5 mins before the end as per the recipe, they were still VERY hard - didn't quite look like butter beans either, but hey ho, they're were in there now.
ReplyDeleteNote to self - must wear glasses when shopping for beans and pay more attention to the label - they were lupini beans and I could have cooked them until Christmas and they still wouldn't have been soft! Lovely soup, but will be reverting to green beans in future!
Oh that's so crap and so funny, Moby - I'm so sorry you bought the wrong beans - never heard of lupini beans myself, but now know to avoid them!
DeleteButter beans are literally an institution here - have heard of lima beans but didn't realise they were the same thing, so will bear(bare?)that in mind for any future recipes that have them. Thankyou!
This is where I confess that I always overcook my butter beans because I like 'em *mushy* ;0)