Soup is good food

This is one of my favorite soups. Sadly, I don’t make it very often anymore because of how much lactose is contains – soymilk just doesn’t taste right to me for this!

White Bean Chowder
1 pound white beans (small whites, navies, or great northern)
1 c chopped onion
1 1/2 c chopped celery
1 – 2 c sliced mushrooms
garlic to taste
1/4 c butter
3 T cornstarch or arrowroot
1/8 t pepper
3+ c milk
16 oz frozen whole-kernel corn
16 oz frozen green beans
14 – 16 oz can chopped tomatoes
1/4+ lb sharp cheddar
water

Rinse, sort, and soak beans overnight. Drain. In large pot, cook beans in 6 to 8 cups of water until tender (about 2 or 2 1/2 hours). Meanwhile, cook onion, celery, mushrooms, and garlic briefly in butter in a saucepan. Blend in cornstarch/arrowroot and pepper. Stir in milk and heat mixture until hot but not boiling. Put cooked beans in a strainer and rinse briefly in hot water, then put back into large pot. Add milk mixture to large pot, along with remaining ingredients. You might want to add water or additional milk until the soup has an amount of liquid you find appealing. Heat to serving temperature. For extra zip, add a few dashes of bottled hot sauce or a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.


May you have a relaxing weekend, filled with soup or books or naps or knitting or whatever your heart desires!

*purrrrrrrr……zzzzzzzzz….* -Chaos

*….zzzzzzzzzzz….* -Mayhem

30 thoughts on “Soup is good food”

  1. Not fair! Every day is a weekend for kitties.

    Hope you have a good weekend, Chris. Unlike you, weekends mean that everybody’s home & so more work/less knitting for me!

  2. Aww, the perfect picture of contentment.

    Mmmm, thanks for the recipe! It’s going to rain all weekend, so I may need to try it in the crockpot.

  3. Yum, sounds so good! Could you make it with the lactose-free milk? (Not that I know how the lactose-free milk tastes, but I’ve seen it about.)

  4. SOUP! I do love soup….personally, I was going to make some kind of beef soup over the weekend, but it almost seems too heavy right now with the “warm” we have going on. There is another, simple thing that I like to make–goes like this:

    Chicken and/or Vegatable broth (I’ll use veg, because my daughter does not eat meat)
    Big bunch of cleaned fresh spinach leaves
    Sliced button mushrooms
    Garlic and other seasonings to taste (salt, mainly, as you really just want the flavor of the broth)

    Bring your broth to a boil, add mushrooms, give it a minute or two….add spinach and seasonings….wait until spinish is wilted….DONE! Its super-good and easy.

    I also like to make egg-drop soup with veggie broth, but it seems I have no soy sauce at the moment….hmmm…

  5. You know I’m a sucker for soup…..
    I just may have to play with this to see if I can reduce the milk and still get a good creamy flavor. I have tricks for stuff like that 😉

  6. man that soup sounds awesome. i love chowder, but not a huge fan of clams, this might be the answer i have been searching for in vain. in vain i say.

  7. Try Lactaid milk. It actually is real milk, so the taste isn’t too different, but it doesn’t have all the lactose. I find that it’s weird to drink on its own, but it’s great when with something else, like cereal or soup.

    Okay, lactose is taken care of, now onto the issue that I can’t digest beans either….

  8. 1/4 + lb cheddar sounds wonderful.

    Mayhem is demonstrating how to sleep in a cast, I see–arm stretched out. That’s how I’ve been sleeping lately, anyway. 🙂

  9. Chris- I am starting to really begrudge the amount of money I spend on food. Think of the yarn you could have.

    I truly think I could live food, but certainly not yarn.

  10. It’s so mild out that it doesn’t seem like the right weather for soup – alas, that won’t last, I’m sure. Soup is good stuff – ‘hearty stock’, as my mum used to say.

  11. Sounds good, although I can’t have that much milk either. Beans will cook much faster if you don’t salt the water; I throw a bay leaf in the bean cooking water. It’s a science osmolarity/plant cell wall thing.

    Have a great weekend!

  12. What if you just change it into a bean soup rather than a chowder by using broth instead of milk? I love a good brothy bean soup.

  13. Thanks for the recipe! I’m always on the lookout for good soup and stew recipes.

    Have a good weekend! Looks like Chaos and May have already started their weekend.

  14. Yum, soup.
    O.M.G. Two days of knitting??? Good thing I didn’t have a chance to check in, the shock might have done me in 😉 Pretty stripey panther trap. 🙂

    That panther kitten! The cute! The cute!!

  15. What is the lovely purple-ness that the kitties are snoozing on? I would like that to be me right now. Thanks for the soup!

  16. Yum! I love soup on cool days. I made buffalo chicken chili this weekend, and knitting and cat snuggling are most definitely on my agenda. Hope your weekend’s great, too!

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