Creamy white bean & kale soup | cozy one-pot vegan dinner

today we're making my creamy white bean and kale soup it is really healthy but surprisingly creamy and packed with so much flavor it's easy enough to whip up on a week night but you can also make a big batch on sunday and enjoy it throughout the week we'll start by prepping our aromatics we've got a sweet onion three ribs of celery three carrots and garlic sweet onions have a little bit more natural sugar in them than regular yellow onions they're great raw in salads or if you want to caramelize them or where you just want a slightly subtle sweet flavor if you don't have a sweet onion if all you have is a yellow onion at home that's totally fine it works just as well this is a really pungent onion let's clear some of this off and where's my trash bowl trash bowl the garbage in our new kitchen is way over there so this is super useful to have right here so don't have to keep walking back and forth by the way this is our new house uh we just moved in a few days ago and it looks pretty tidy here because i have put all the boxes behind the kitchen so once we're fully moved in and everything's furnished i will give you a house tour but in the meantime welcome to my new kitchen for the carrots cut them in half and then take the heavier part of the carrot and cut that into quarters and then dice it up for the bottom half the skinnier part you can just cut it in half and dice that up we've also got three ribs of celery if i'm being perfectly honest i don't love celery it's not my favorite but when you cook it down with onions and salt and carrots it's going to make a great base for the soup we're going to mince up six six cloves oh it's a tough one six cloves of garlic there it is garlic and if that sounds like a lot of garlic it's because it is it is a lot of garlic but garlic is delicious i love it and it's gonna add a lot of flavor to this soup and it works really well with all the other ingredients a few other ingredients for this soup we've got some cannellini beans which are white kidney beans i love using them in this soup because they are so creamy and texture almost fluffy have a nice mild but subtle nutty taste because of their creamy texture they're going to naturally thicken this soup in a way that other beans don't do as well and because it's a weeknight soup i'm just using canned cannellini beans that i've rinsed and drained but if you want to take the soup over the top you can cook your own dried beans from scratch and a little bit of vegetable broth or water with some aromatics like onions or bay leaves and it'll enhance the flavor of the soup even more and our second ingredient that's going to bring creaminess to the soup is a potato this is a yukon gold potato you're gonna peel it and dice it and when you cook potatoes down they're gonna act as a natural thickening agent for the soup my first technique for leveling up your soups with lots of flavor is to make a bouquet garnish a fancy french word but it's really simple it's just a bundle of herbs tied together you can use kitchen twine which costs like two dollars at a hardware store and you add it to soups or stocks or braises or casseroles to infuse a lot of flavor today i'm using a sprig of rosemary a sprig of fresh sage and two bay leaves if you're worried about buying fresh herbs because you think you won't be able to get through all of them before they go bad there are many ways you can preserve them or upcycle them and i'm going to show you one of my favorite ways to do that if you have leftover tough herbs like rosemary and sage or thyme in oregano you can freeze them in olive oil for rosemary remove the individual needles from the stem and roughly chop the leaves up and for sage i like to roll the leaves together and then chiffonade them then measure out the desired amount of herbs into a clean ice cube tray you can use a teaspoon or tablespoon measure so you know exactly how many herbs there are in each cube or you can just eyeball it i prefer my herbs chopped up a little bit but you can even add unchopped herbs to the ice cube trays if you prefer pour in some olive oil to submerge the herbs or if you prefer you can do this with melted vegan butter too and if you're planning to use these herb cubes for high heat cooking you can use an oil with a higher smoke point such as avocado oil pop the ice cube tray in the freezer when you're ready to cook just drop one of these herby olive oil cubes in a hot pan it's going to bring a lot of flavor to your dishes whether you're toasting some nuts or making a sauce or veggie saute or heating up pasta and best of all now you don't have to worry about wasting any leftover herbs all right let's get the soup started we're gonna heat up a large soup pot or dutch oven with some olive oil over medium high heat once the pot is hot add the diced onions carrots and celery i'm gonna season the vegetables with a little bit of salt as my teenage idol barefoot contessa obviously who else taught me a long time ago you want to layer in seasoning as you go at every stage of cooking so that your food tastes well seasoned and balanced instead of bland or too salty we'll cook these down until the vegetables start to soften and the onions start to just brown about six to eight minutes once the vegetables have softened and have some color on them add in the minced garlic and a half teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes and stir frequently for about one to two minutes the red pepper flakes are gonna give a slight kick to the soup but it's not gonna be spicy while the vegetables are sauteing we're gonna do our last step which is to chop up some canned artichoke hearts they're gonna add a little more body and meatiness to the soup but they are totally optional now we're going to deglaze the pot by pouring in three and a half to four cups of vegetable broth kind of depending on how thick you want the soup to be and make sure you really scrape up the brown bits that are stuck to the bottom of the pot that's where a lot of flavor lives so you want to get those in there too now we'll add the cannellini beans along with the potatoes the chopped artichoke hearts and season with some kosher salt as well as the black pepper and finally we'll take that bouquet garni and submerge it under the liquid bring the soup to a boil and once it's boiling reduce the heat and cover the pan to maintain a simmer for about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender while the soup is simmering we'll prepare our second flavor booster for the soup which is a gremolata again another fancy sounding word but it is again very simple a traditional gremolata is made with three ingredients it's an italian ruby condiment we've got chopped parsley garlic and lemon zest and you basically just chop those all together very finely my version also has a little bit of basil for that citrusy anisee taste as well as some coarse sea salt so we'll finely chop one cup of flat leaf parsley along with one half cup of fresh basil leaves and then add three large garlic cloves you can use a microplane or grater or just finely chop them up with a knife and then we'll zest two small lemons directly on top of everything a gremolata is one of my go-to flavor boosters that you can sprinkle on all kinds of soups to give it a bright finish but it's also great on toasted bread grilled or roasted vegetables or your favorite protein then finely mince everything together and finally sprinkle some coarse or flaky sea salt on top we'll sprinkle the gremolata on top of the soup before serving so it's going to add a lot of zing to an otherwise creamy hearty soup the potatoes are tender and now i'm just going to remove that bouquet garni the twine makes it easy to remove it all at once instead of the herbs floating everywhere throughout the soup and now it's time to introduce our third way of making this soup really creamy but still healthy we're gonna blend half of this soup you can use a stand blender or i'm gonna use an immersion blender today to keep this as a kind of one pot easy meal and just blend up about half of the soup that will naturally thicken the soup or if you do it in a stand blender just return the blended part back to the soup and once you stir the pureed part into the rest of the soup you can see it naturally thickens it up it makes it creamy without having to use any extra ingredients like coconut milk or cashews or anything like that after we blend this soup we're going to add in some chopped kale i'm just removing the tough stems i called the stem the inner the rib the tough rib in the middle but if you don't mind it you can just leave it in and this is a great technique to get a lot of greens into your diet without feeling like you're eating a lot of salad just add in some greens during the last three to five minutes of cooking a soup or a stew or anything hearty like that and you won't really even notice it's there but you'll be getting in a lot of vitamins and nutrients i prefer to use lacinato kale because it's less tough than curly kale now we're going to add our chopped kale to the soup and we'll let this simmer for just three to five minutes until the kale is tender but still bright green all right the soup is done at this point give it a taste season with just a little bit of salt because there's some salt in the gremolata and some black pepper if you're planning to eat the soup today or maybe tomorrow you can add the gremolata now but if you want to freeze the soup check out the blog post which is linked in the description box below for tips on how to freeze this soup and my final tip for infusing extra flavor into this soup is drizzling some olive oil on top before serving this is the time to use that good quality extra virgin olive oil with the fruity undertone since the soup is relatively low in fat the extra virgin olive oil at the end is going to add some nice richness as well as a subtle texture oh it's hearty and creamy but still really fresh and bright and lemony got a little bit of kick from the red pepper flakes i think you'll love it you can find the recipe as always on my blog which is linked below and if you're interested in more hearty healthy comfort food i've got some more videos right here

Channel: Rainbow Plant Life

Views: 552,079

Rating: 4.9419117 out of 5

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Id: Pj3GR7b-s7s

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020