15 Bean Soup Italian Style with Sausage & Fresh Herbs

hi i'm eric from simply elegant home cooking we're entering fall time which is my favorite time of year one of the reasons why i love making my own homemade soup so today i'm going to demonstrate my recipe for an italian 15 bean soup with italian sausage and fresh herbs i'm going to show you the right way to do this it's not the quickest or the easiest way but if you follow the simple steps that i lay out you're going to get a tremendous result we're going to build layers of flavor so stick around and i'm going to show you how it's done so to get started this is the exact product that i like to use for my beans this is really convenient because you can buy this one bag for about three dollars at the grocery store it's available everywhere and it gives you the full variety of 15 different types of beans okay and the contents of that bag include not just the beans but also this flavoring packet now i'm actually going to take that out and discard it because i'm making an italian version of the soup and we're going to build that flavor using the most authentic italian ingredients and what we want to do we want to soak the beans now i already did this last night i bought two bags of the 15 bean soup mix so this one has been soaking overnight all you need to do you need to just pour it you know into a big bowl cover it with cold water make sure you reserve several inches of water above those beans because you can see they really expanded so you want to set that out at room temperature overnight and now i just want to rinse this very thoroughly and drain it off once you drain the beans what you're left with should look a little something like this and there's a reason i did it off camera it's easy to make a mess okay so now that our beans are prepped we can begin building layers of flavor into our bean soup and it starts with the italian sausage i'm using sweet you could also use spicy or a combination i have a pound of it here and you also want to be sure that you have a really high quality italian extra virgin olive oil this is the one that i like to use now you don't necessarily have to use this brand but if you want to know when you're shopping for italian extra virgin olive oils if you want to be sure to get a good product look for this protected geographical indication if you see that seal on the packaging you can rest assured that you're getting a very high quality product and in a large dutch oven or soup pot you just want to go with a little bit of that extra virgin olive oil you don't need much because the sausage has a lot of fat that's going to render out i broke that in two pieces just so it's a little easier to work with and we just want to get some nice color and we're going to break this down with the spatula as it cooks and if you're using a cast iron dutch oven like i am these things get pretty hot so i preheated that on medium but i just turned it down more like the medium-low and that should be plenty and what you want to do is this cooks you just want to take a spatula and break it up a little something like that so we'll check back in a few minutes and as that cooks you just want to continue to work it with your spatula a little something like that be constantly stirring it and when the sausage looks about like this when the pink has all but dissipated we want to add in some veggies so i'm using one onion sweet yellow onion a carrot and some celery and you'll notice i've diced this up but left pretty pretty decent sized pieces in there and you just want to get that in there and give it a big stir i'm also going to add a little bit of sea salt don't be too heavy-handed because there's plenty of salt in that sweet italian sausage and i like to use a significant amount of freshly cracked black pepper and every minute or so you just want to give that a big stir and for great italian flavor fresh thyme is hard to beat all you need to do use your fingers and just strip those leaves off like that and then you just want to work it with your knife to cut them down a little bit further just about like that so i'm going to chop up a little bit more that time okay so i have the rest of the time ready i used about seven or eight sprigs total and once those veggies have been going for about five minutes is when we want to add in that fresh thyme as well as about three cloves of garlic i crushed three cloves of garlic and a garlic press and we want to get this in there later than the veggies because this can burn so we only want to cook this for about a minute or so before we're going to add the stock so you want to get that in there and move it constantly and at the same time you also want to add some crushed red pepper flakes as well as some dry oregano so i'm going to continue stirring for just another few moments okay and about this time this is when your kitchen begins to smell amazing so after just about a minute of cooking that garlic you do not want to burn it i'm going to go in with some stock now i'm using a homemade chicken stock it's imperative that you use homemade to get a good result with this gonna crank the heat up to medium-high to bring this up to temperature and i have another four cups i added four cups of the stock i'm gonna be adding another four cups in just a second i have a link in the description box below if you want to see my recipe for making homemade chicken stock okay and actually before i put the second half of that chicken stock in there i'm gonna add back in the beans gonna do it off camera so i can do it slowly and carefully don't make a mess okay and now that those beans are in there we can carefully add the second half of the stock without risk of making a mess okay so now that we have all of our stock in there you just want to give this a big stir to make sure there's nothing stuck on the bottom of the pot and we want to bring this up to a simmer so once you start to get some bubbling and your soup looks about like this this is a good time to test it for seasoning so that's actually perfect we had a decent amount of salt in the sausage as well as the chicken stock had a little too but you know you can add a little bit more if you need but at this time i'm going to turn the heat down to about medium low we just want to cook this on a gentle simmer and we're going to be adding some more ingredients we're going to be adding some tomato product some canned san marzano tomatoes as well as some italian white wine but with beans you don't want to add acidic ingredients until they're mostly cooked they can turn out tough so we're going to check back once this has been simmering for about an hour and a half okay so an hour and a half has elapsed since the last segment and here's how our soup is looking so at this point the beans are most of the way cooked through i tested one and it's almost ready but needs a little bit more time you'll notice that the volume has reduced which is actually a good thing because at this point we can add the next ingredients we're going to add in the tomato product as well as the white wine and this is the exact tomato product that i like to use when i make this soup this is a 28 ounce can of san marzano tomatoes these are imported from a very specific region in italy and kind of like with the olive oil you know you're getting quality when you see this exact seal on the packaging and those san marzanos come packaged whole so i just crushed them up with my hand off camera and um i want to just kind of slowly get them into the soup and for the wine this is just like all the other ingredients you want to be as authentic as you can be so i always like to use an italian white wine today i'm using a pinot grigio but there's other options so i'm going to go in with maybe about a cup of the wine and one thing that's really really important you want to be sure to use a wine that you would actually enjoy drinking if you wouldn't enjoy sipping on it then you probably shouldn't be cooking with it as well and with those ingredients in there i'm going to again just give it a big stir to incorporate everything and we're going to let this go for about another 30 minutes or so again we added those acidic products the tomatoes and the white wine because the beans turn out better that way they can have a tendency to get a little tough if they're cooked in an acidic product and i just let that wine cook off for about 30 minutes just let that do a low gentle simmer that's plenty of time to cook off the alcohol and allow those flavors to blend to finish cooking the beans fully so at this point we can turn off the heat and i'm ready to add just a few final ingredients that go in last i'm going to add the juice of half a lemon and i'm also going to add a handful of chopped italian parsley so when you get those in just give it another big stir to incorporate everything and our italian 15 bean soup is ready we are ready to plate this up okay so now it's time for my favorite part of every video is when i get to dig in and give it a taste see how this all turned out wow that is just so good the method we used where we layered the flavors over the stove top that's really the way to do it you know when i see those insta pot recipes where they just dump the ingredients in you're never going to get the kind of result doing it that way but if you follow these steps you can get an amazing result in your italian 15 bean soup so i hope you enjoyed this recipe i hope you give it a try be sure to like comment and subscribe i'm eric from simply elegant home cooking and i'll see you again real soon

Channel: Simply Elegant Home Cooking

Views: 10,166

Keywords: 15 bean soup, italian bean soup, hurst's, hambeens, italian 15 bean soup, simply elegant home cooking, 15 bean soup recipe, italian soup recipe

Id: v7rWYQjvB-w

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021