Success: White Bean and Bacon Soup

Sunday, April 9, 2017

This soup might have been a success, but this white bean soup with bacon and browned butter is even better!!

I was confident enough in this White Bean and Bacon Soup from TheKitchn to make a double batch at the first go. Be forewarned: you will need a 7 quart pot to make a double batch. I'll take any occasion to roll out the Le Creuset, and in this case it was necessary. The doubling was because I had to buy 3 pork hocks, and about 4x as much ham, and twice the amount of bacon so it made sense to double the recipe and use up some of these excess ingredients. And now I have 16 servings of soup. So there's that.

I've been remaking a lot of my favorite soups lately, but I've been on the hunt for a good bean soup. I don't usually make meat soups, but I think with beans it might actually be required. This soup works well. It's not super meaty, and the beans absorb a nice quantity of the pork flavorings. I swapped dried herbs de provence for the thyme sprigs, skipped the celery (as always), and next time I might double the carrots. I also let the soup simmer on the stove for a few hours, mostly-covered, to combine more of the flavors.

This White Bean and Bacon Soup is definitely worth making again. But maybe not when I have 12 servings of it sitting in my freezer?
Just be warned that pork hocks are rather gross for the feint-of-meat. And perhaps a double batch is not necessary. 7 quarts is a lot.