Seasons by the Sea: Bean Soup for the Soul
I love bean soups. They are cheap and easy to make, yet require some time and a small bit of attention. This makes me feel like I’m really involved in a cooking project, but, in fact, I’m just making a meal with about 73 cents worth of ingredients. They are healthy and hearty and can be a one-dish meal. You can make them thick and chunky and rustic like a chili, or smooth and silky and sophisticated.
Bean, or legume, soups can be virtuous and vegan, or enriched with cream, cooked with smoked meats, or topped with tadka, an Indian spiced ghee mixture often used to garnish lentil soups.
A legume is either the plant that grows peas or beans in pods, or the bean, pea, or pulse itself. According to Harold McGee in his “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen,” “beans and peas belong to the third largest family among the flowering plants (after the orchid and daisy families), and the second most important family in the human diet, after the grasses.” What makes them most valuable in many cultures is the amount of protein they contain — as much as three times more than wheat or rice.
There are many theories on how to cook beans, how to reduce the flatulence factor, and when to salt them while cooking. Most legumes do not require overnight soaking. Chickpeas are the exception; they definitely need a long soaking period.
You can bring the beans to a quick boil, let them sit for a few hours until they get wrinkly, then proceed with your recipe. (Lentils and split peas require no pre-soaking.) Alternately, you can just cook and cook and cook them till done. Some people recommend discarding the soaking water to reduce the “indigestible carbohydrate reaction” in our bellies. But when you toss this water out, you lose a significant amount of the vitamins and minerals and flavor. It’s better to just give them a long, slow cooking time.
Regarding salt, I come down in the middle. Cook the beans for about 30 minutes before salting your water, then add some for flavor. If you don’t salt until after the beans are completely cooked, the beans themselves will taste under-seasoned. Some people suggest a teaspoon of baking soda per quart of water to speed up the cooking process, but this can give the soup a slippery, soapy-mouth feel. Ew; skip it.
Chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans, are a native of southwest Asia, and like favas, peas, and lentils, they have been cultivated for approximately 9,000 years. Besides being made into soups, chickpeas can be roasted, sprouted, fried, ground into flour, and, most commonly, made into hummus. There are two kinds, desi and kabuli. Desis have small seeds, a thick coat and dark color, and they are most common in Asia, Iran, and Mexico. The kabuli variety are the larger, cream-colored kind, with a thin seed coat, and are most frequently used in the Middle East and Mediterranean regions.
Most lentils are grown in India, Turkey, and . . . Canada. There are basically two kinds: the large, flat seeds and small, rounder seeds. Lentils come in a variety of colors, from brown to orange, yellow, red, black, and green.
Black beans, one of over 500 varieties of kidney beans, are also known as turtle beans or caviar criollo. When cooked, they have a creamy texture and slightly sweet flavor.
If you plan to incorporate beans into a vegetable soup, it is recommended you cook them separately first, with a bouquet garni and a few cloves of garlic. If you are simply making a bean soup, then cook the beans (or peas or lentils) on their own for a while first, then add such vegetables as carrots and celery for the last hour of cooking.
Some legumes take an inordinately long time to cook, which is attributed to old age and/or poor storage. I tend to keep a variety of black beans, split peas, and lentils on hand at all times but find myself throwing them out after a year. It is also a good idea to spread them out on a cookie sheet and check for little pebbles before beginning a recipe.
There are so many ways to cook legumes into soups, and this is a nice time of year to putter in the kitchen, stir the pot, play around with flavors, and have the reward of a super healthy, inexpensive, and hearty meal.