navy bean soup

We have this relatively new restaurant here called Rain Uptown. We’ve eaten there a whole bunch of times, and every time we’ve been the food has been really, really, really good. They serve mostly Italian food in the evenings and the pasta is fresh and delicious. The only downside is that their service tends to be a bit slow, and for that reason we haven’t been back in a while.

Anyway, the soup du jour is almost always TO DIE FOR. The best is the cream of mushroom, followed closely by the French onion soup, which is baked in a hollowed-out onion and is soooooo yummy. Unfortunately for me, it seems like almost every time we eat at Rain Uptown, the soup du jour is clam chowder. BLECH. Me no likey.

But there was this one time that we went with Cousin Laura (who has a blog and has not yet posted an entry despite my begging and pleading–so I linked to it in an effort to humiliate her into posting something because I’m mean like that) and the soup du jour was navy bean soup. I didn’t order it because I didn’t think it sounded great, but Cousin Laura ordered it and guess what? It was great great great. Great great. Wonderful, even. So I’ve been wanting to try to recreate it in my kitchen, and this is my first effort.

Navy Bean Soup (adapted from Paula Deen)

one 1-pound bag of dried navy beans
64 oz of water
one 3/4″ thick slice of ham off the bone, diced
1/4 stick of butter
onion powder
salt–lots and lots of salt

Pour dried beans onto a plate or a shallow bowl (a dark color, if you have one, makes it easier to see) and check to see if there are any stones or other inedibles in your beans.

Then rinse the beans in a colander under warm water for about 3-5 minutes to get them good and clean.

Pour the water in your soup pot and add the rinsed navy beans, and then bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer with the lid on for about 3 hours, adding water as necessary (I had to add about 32 extra ounces over an almost 4-hour period).

After about 3 hours, or when beans are tender and fully cooked, add the butter and diced ham to the soup pot.

Now this is my favorite part!! After the butter has melted, you get out the most excellent kitchen tool OF ALL TIME–the immersion blender.

This is important: you don’t want to puree the whole pot of beans, just enough that it turns the broth into more of a creamy-looking liquid. If you do this for too long, you’ll have navy bean baby food, and that’s just plain disgusting. So you just run the immersion blender in the bottom of the soup pot a few times. I think I did it about 3 or 4 times for about 10 seconds each time. When you get the consistency you want, add onion powder and salt to taste. It requires a lot of salt, just so you know. Oh, and this is also important: you don’t add salt to the beans until the very end, because if you add salt too early it makes the beans tough instead of tender. Anyway, when you’re done, the soup should look something like this.

So if you don’t have an immersion blender, it’s okay. You could probably use the back of a big spoon and kindof smush some of the beans if you wanted to, or if you have a blender you could take out some of the beans, puree them that way, and then return them to the pot. Or, I suppose you could just skip the smushing altogether if you want. But really, you guys, you NEED an immersion blender. Especially if you like soup, like me.

The verdict? My navy bean soup turned out really well. Plus it made my house smell FAB-YOO-LUSS. But it wasn’t quite as good as what we had at Rain Uptown. Back to the drawing board.