Tuscan White Bean Soup with potatoes, carrots and spinach makes a perfect dinner on chilly days. Super tasty and super satisfying! And very easy to make.
Soups have an important place in our family. We love a good comforting soup for lunch or as a starter at dinner. Turkish red lentil soup is a classic for us and we make it quite often. Also, spinach soup, cabbage soup and oyster mushroom soup are our new favorites.
Tuscan Bean Soup is the best comforting meal on a chilly and rainy day. You will get warm even with the smell that fills your home. This is such a satisfying soup loaded with veggies and flavors that you don’t need anything else on your dinner table. Maybe just some drops of lime juice to add richness to the soup when serving.
About The Ingredients
- White Beans: You can use canned beans, which will make things even easier. Navy beans or cannellini beans work fine for this vegetarian bean soup. But you can definitely use other types like black eyed peas, lima beans or cranberry beans. If you want to cook beans from scratch though, soaking beans overnight would be the best before you start to cook them. It takes about 30 minutes to cook the raw beans if they are soaked for a good period of time beforehand.
- Vegetables: We use onion, garlic, potatoes, carrots, celery and spinach. All these have the most comforting flavor together. We sometimes add in some sweetcorn too and substitute kale for spinach.
- Spices: Black pepper and cumin are the spices that give a warming feeling to the soup.
- Hot Water: We use just plain hot water in this white bean soup because all the vegetables we put have enough flavor. But if you want, you can use vegetable stock to have even a richer taste.
- Lemon juice: The sourness of lemon will take this vegan bean soup to a whole next level. You can add as much as you like, but start with 1 tablespoon. Taste and adjust the amount as you like.
How To Make
The recipe is quite straightforward.
- Cook chopped onion in olive oil until translucent.
- Add in garlic, carrots, potatoes and celery. Sprinkle black pepper and cumin and stir well. Cook all these for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the veggies stick to the bottom of the pan, add a splash of water. Let it cook for a few minutes.
- Add in beans and pour hot water into the pot and cook over medium heat. Bring it to a boil and then let it simmer until all the veggies are soft enough for 15 minutes.
- As the final touch, add in roughly chopped spinach or kale and lemon juice for the best result. And let it cook for another 10 minutes.
- Serve hot.
Serving Suggestions
We love some homemade bread with this white bean soup. Pide bread or hot water cornbread would be our favorite when it comes to soup serving.
If you are planning to have this vegan white bean soup for lunch, we recommend a fresh salad like Turkish shepherd salad to pair with it.
As always: If you make this recipe, let us know what you think by rating it and leaving a comment below. And post a pic on Instagram too—tag @give_recipe so we can see!
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📖 Recipe
Mediterranean Tuscan White Bean Soup
INGREDIENTS
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 meidum onion diced
- 2 carrots diced
- 1 potato diced
- 2 celery stalks chopped
- 1 bunch spinach or kale stems removed and roughly torn
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups white beans canned (drained and rinsed) or cooked beforehand
- 4 cups hot water
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
INSTRUCTIONS
- In a large pot, heat olive oil and add onion and cook until golden. Add in other veggies and sprinkle black pepper and cumin over them. Stir well. Cook for 2-3 minutes stirring. If it gets too dry, just pour a little water to prevent sticking and stir.
- Toss in beans and pour hot water over them. Cook over medium high heat and bring to simmer.
- Reduce heat to medium low and cook partly covered for about 20 minutes so that all flavors combine well.
- Serve hot with a little extra black pepper and lime juice.
NUTRITION
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Marsha Boswell says
My husband and I loved this soup! I made some changes, though. I had some mixed beans that I wanted to use, so I soaked them over night and cooked the next day, throwing away both the soaking water and the cooking water. I used spinach, because I love spinach and had 3/4 of a bag in the fridge. We also liked it the next day with pieces of leftover chicken that we added after the soup was nice and hot. Will definitely make this again, using canned white beans next time as the recipe suggests.
Vanessa says
I love this soup recipe! I followed the directions and it came out perfect! One of my favorite recipes!
Zerrin says
Glad o hear that Vanessa! One of our ultimate winter soups. Easy and full of nutritions.
Will says
Totally bland. Tasted like water. Added garlic salt, pablano peppers, oregano, left over meat balls, thyme and simmered it for at least 45 min. and it ended up good. Topped it with cilantro, lime and a little cheese. How could I go wrong.
Zerrin says
Hi Will! Sorry to hear that your soup tastes bland. It is one of our favorites and we make it often during fall and winter. Not sure why yours doesn't taste as good. Could that be because of the beans you use? I mean some beans might be really tasteless.
Gloria murphy says
I made this soup tonight and it was so delicious! The only thing is, I had to guess a few things. I'm rather a new cook and the directions never told me when to put in the garlic so I didn't. Also, I wasn't sure when to put in the potatoes ( are they one of the veggies?). I put the spinach in at the end, so it just wilted. When should I actually put in the garlic, salt and spinach, and potatoes. Thank you!
Zerrin says
Thank you Gloria for sharing your experience with the recipe!
Will make those additions & corrections asap.
Cheers!