Escarole and Bean Soup
Living in an Italian household, I grew up eating a lot of escarole and beans as a child. My mom made it and her Italian mother made it and I’m sure it goes farther back than that. I make it for my daughter and hope that someday she’ll make it for her family. It’s peasant food, but its simplicity and nourishment cannot be understated.
For my escarole and beans soup, I always add plenty of garlic, and finish it with lots of fresh black pepper. Escarole is in the chicory family, it looks a lot like lettuce, but it’s quite bitter, and benefits from light cooking (though you can eat it raw in a salad if you wish). It grows very well in our cool, wet autumns and winters here in the Pacific Northwest. This is one of those soups I love to make in the fall and winter when I feel a cold coming on, or when I’m already sick with a cold. I swear it helps me heal up faster, and it also makes me nostalgic for the good parts of my childhood.
What makes my soup even more nutrient dense is the broth I make it with. I make it with my super rich, extra gelatinous chicken broth. Broths form the foundation of so much of my cooking. It wasn’t until I was consistently incorporating homemade bone broths into my diet that I noticed real differences in my health, especially my skin health. Broth is by no means a complicated or expensive food to make. It’s something our ancestors made to stretch every last morsel of food that they had, while also extracting nutrients hidden in the bones and connective tissues of the animals that they were consuming.
Escarole and Bean Soup (makes 4 servings)
1 1/2 cups dry white beans (I love cannellini) soaked overnight in plenty of water (alternatively you can use two 13.5oz cans of white beans)
1 head of garlic (about 8 cloves)
extra virgin olive oil
3-4 cups chicken broth
1 large head of escarole
Plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper
1. Cook the soaked beans in plenty of salted water until nice and tender. Drain and set aside. Or, if you’re using canned beans, drain and rinse them well and set aside.
2. Peel and chop about 8 cloves of garlic and put in a soup pot. Add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil and saute for just about 10 seconds. Add the broth to the pot and bring to a simmer.
3. While the broth is coming to a simmer, rinse and roughly chop the escarole. Once the broth is simmering, add the escarole to the pot. Stir and cook until the greens have wilted and lose a bit of their bitterness, but still retain their vibrancy, about 5-10 mins. Add the beans to the pot and gently stir until just warmed through. At this point, if you think the soup needs more broth, add it.
4. Turn off the heat. Season with a generous amount of salt to taste. This soup is made with minimal ingredients, and seasoning it well is important. Ladle into bowls, grind lots of fresh pepper on top, and finish it off with a drizzle of really good extra virgin olive oil.