I’ve become a big fan of 16 Bean Soup. This shows the beans after soaking. It looks less appealing after it’s cooked because the small legumes mostly dissolve and make a baby food colored broth but this illustrates what drew me to pick up the ready-mixed bean bag at the grocery store. Technically, there are fewer varieties of beans in the mix because there are different sizes of common beans and barley is included which is a grain. My recipe uses the common soup support ingredients: garlic, onion, celery, carrots, salt, chilis, and pepper; but I also add a melange of Indian spices: cardamom, clove, cumin, coriander, ginger, cinnamon, mustard — and you can add turmeric if you want to yellow-fy the color. The turmeric taste got lost the one time I used it with all the other stuff I added. I hardly ever measure anything anymore so I can’t really give you my exact recipe. (There’s a decent recipe on the bag.) Anyway, you can still taste the beans and this soup gave me a newfound appreciation for large lima beans. I made lima bean hummus from scratch after making this.
Sidebar: One of my sidebar links and internet acquaintances made the front page of the New York Times Fashion & Stlye section today! As you probably know, I’m mostly vegan but the meat use by Georgia and Alie here makes it all the more hilarious.
