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Bean soup with chicken

Chicken and White Bean Soup

Quick, tasty, made from everyday ingredients — a soup for the whole family. You can make this bean and chicken soup with any beans, canned or dried, and with a whole chicken or any cut-up chicken (boneless or bone-in). It's also a tasty, budget-friendly soup made with chicken hearts.

katushafin

Recipe author

Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Chicken leg quarter

Water

2.5

White beans

200

Onion

Carrot

Tomato paste

100

Potatoes

Vegetable oil

Butter

Salt

Peppercorns

Bay leaf

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 33 % 3 g

Fats 22 % 2 g

Carbohydrates 44 % 4 g

44 kcal

GI: 100 / 0 / 0

Cooking method

Step 1:

How do you make chicken and white bean soup? Gather your ingredients. Rinse the chicken (or chicken fillet) under cold water. You can remove the skin, but it's optional.
Step 2:

Pick over the beans well, rinse them, and soak them in cold water for at least 5 hours. Don't soak them much longer than that — beyond a point, nutrients start leaching out. Then drain and rinse the beans again.
Step 3:

Put the beans and chicken in a pot and cover with filtered or bottled water. Set it over medium heat, bring it to a boil, and skim off the foam. Add salt and peppercorns. Reduce the heat and simmer the broth for an hour and a half. Keep an eye on the pot — beans throw off a lot of foam as they cook!
Step 4:

While the chicken broth simmers, make the sauté. Peel the onion and carrot, dice the onion, and grate the carrot on the fine side of a box grater.
Step 5:

I always sauté in a mix of vegetable oil and butter — that way the butter doesn't burn and the flavor is more delicate.
Step 6:

Sauté over low heat for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
Step 7:

At the end, add the tomato paste and cook for another 5 minutes.
Step 8:

By now the broth has simmered for an hour and a half, so it's time to add the potatoes — peel and cube them first. Before adding them, lift out the cooked chicken leg.
Step 9:

Cook the potatoes until tender, then stir in the sauté. Important! A tomato-based sauté always goes in after the potatoes are cooked — the acid keeps them from softening otherwise! Taste for salt and adjust as needed.
Step 10:

Pull the chicken meat off the bones, cut it into small pieces, and return it to the soup.
Step 11:

Bring the soup to a boil, add the bay leaf, and call everyone to the table!

You can use absolutely any beans here — white or red — and with green beans it'll cook even faster. In tomato season it's tastiest with fresh tomatoes; the rest of the year I use canned chopped ones. Whether to add potatoes is up to you, but they make the soup heartier and thicker. This recipe is a nice change of pace from your usual menu.
You can swap the chicken for turkey or any other meat you like. Just keep in mind that the cooking time and calorie count will change.
Since everyone's tolerance for salt, sweetness, bitterness, heat, and acidity is different, always add spices and seasonings to your own taste. If you're using a seasoning for the first time, keep in mind that some are especially easy to overdo (chili pepper, for example).
Important! Whether or not the recipe specifies an amount of water, it's always best to go by your own preference (do you like a thick soup or a thinner one?), the size of your pot, and the ingredients you're using. Keep in mind that the author has their own idea of how much meat, potato, grain, and other ingredients belong in the soup, and it may not match yours. In practice, if it's your first time making it, don't cook a whole pot at once. Make a small tasting batch for one or two people: scale all the ingredients down to 1–2 servings and figure the water at roughly 1 cup per serving for a very thick soup, up to 1½–2 cups for a thinner one. Remember that some of the liquid will boil off as it cooks. After tasting that small batch, you can adjust both the amount of liquid and the proportions of ingredients to your taste. Before long, like most seasoned cooks, you'll be adding water and ingredients by eye.