Great Northern Bean Soup

  4.7 – 71 reviews  • Vegetable Soup Recipes

In Taiwan, people frequently prepare this dish. With a tortilla, bacon and an egg are fried, then served with hot sauce. You won’t likely like if you’re a typical picky eater. You can either use ham or bacon.

Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 45 mins
Total Time: 1 hr
Servings: 4
Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  1. 1 tablespoon olive oil
  2. 1 large onion, chopped
  3. 5 cloves garlic, minced
  4. 2 carrots, chopped
  5. 1 stalk celery, chopped
  6. 4 cups vegetable broth
  7. 1 large potato, chopped
  8. 2 bay leaves
  9. 1 tablespoon dried basil
  10. 1 teaspoon sea salt
  11. ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
  12. 1 pinch ground thyme
  13. 2 (15 ounce) cans great Northern beans, rinsed and drained

Instructions

  1. Heat olive oil in a stockpot over medium heat. Cook and stir onion and garlic in hot oil until the onion is tender, about 5 minutes.
  2. Stir carrots and celery into the onion mixture. Pour vegetable broth into the stockpot; add potato, bay leaves, basil, sea salt, pepper, and thyme. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook at a simmer until the vegetables are beginning to soften, about 20 minutes.
  3. Stir beans into the soup; continue simmering until the beans are hot and tender, about 20 minutes more.

Reviews

Kevin Scott
Too much garlic !!!
Kevin Mills
Simple, easy and delicious. If you soak the bean for 6 hours, you can use 5 mins of cooking time on InstaPot.
Michael Clark
Good but way to salty
Johnathan Herman
Great recipe.! Thank you for sharing.
Jason Dixon
WOW this soup was good! I made it a couple days ago for lunch. will definitely be adding more vegetables overall next time. I had to use chicken broth because that’s all I had, but it turned out fine!
Darren Williams
My family thinks this is a very tasty soup, but it’s not what we’d consider a “Great Northern Bean Soup”. More of a “Very Tasty Vegetable Soup With Some Great Northern Beans Added”. That being said, next time I’m going to make the following adjustments: 1) Reduce the first simmer to 10 minutes after bringing to a boil. At 20 minutes the potatoes and carrots were almost mush. 2) Reduce the second simmer to 5 minutes because it doesn’t take 10 to heat the beans. 3) Increase the cans of Great Northern Beans from two to four so we don’t have to go on a treasure hunt to find the beans.
Gerald Abbott
Easy and delicious. I added one more carrot than the recipe called for. Next time, I will add some additional broth, as too much of it evaporated for me. I want to go back and read any variations others might have made, as I’m not good at knowing what I can add/change with the basil, but my husband and I both liked this as is. It was very flavorful.
Alexis James
Doing a Daniel fast, checking out recipes that fit into the criteria. This soup was so much yummier than I anticipated. I didn’t change a thing, except I may have added a bit more garlic. I can get a bit enthusiastic with garlic! So thankful for the excellent recipes on AllRecipes!
Terry Warren
Loved it! I used 2 cans of bean medley and put a bit more veggies in. Turned out amazing.
Caitlyn Gordon
No potato. Added zucchini chunks and a little pepper flakes loved it.
Ariel Reese
I made this without the oil and just cooked it overnight with dry beans and it was amazing!!
Mark Key
So good! This was my first complete vegetarian meal and I didn’t miss the meat at all! Hearty, filling, and comfort food all the way. I left out the bay leaves and don’t care for thyme but it was still amazing. Highly recommend.
David Mitchell
So there’s one ingredient that is in the photo but missing from the recipe and that is kale. So after I made the soup right before I was about to serve it I threw in some kale which gave it to two or three minutes needed to blanch the kale and it came out with the soup looks like the picture it really adds a bitter bass note to the soup. I highly recommend adding a little kale to the recipe other than that the recipes perfect although I did make my own vegetable stock stock rather than buying store-bought which gives it the flavor I desire.??? Heavy on tthyme
Nicholas Marks
Great choice as long as you make *one* important modification. After you take the soup off the burner and let it cool for 15 minutes, carefully ladle half of it into a blender. Once smooth, stir it back into the main pot. The result is a silky, creamier soup that is much easier to eat, and prettier to serve, too!
Jessica Burke
I soaked dry beans (one 16 oz. bag) overnight. The next day drained rinsed and set the beans aside. Sauteed the onions and garlic a couple of minutes, added celery, the soaked beans, spices and covered with water to about an inch over the beans and cooked till the beans were done. Then added the vegetable broth, carrots, and potatoes. Simmered till vegetables were tender. It is a very tasty soup.
Joseph Anderson
It was nice. I’ll probably only add one garlic next time. I believe the carrots (fresh) and potatoes really made the soup pop when you scoop your spoonful. It was different and nice and refreshing!
Jamie Meyer
This was a very good and I’ll make it again. I added more beans (not canned, the dry ones that I soaked) A little less basil but excellent recipe!!
William White
Delicious! I added in mushrooms too, and ended up having to add about 3 extra cups of water by the end. Soo tasty!! Definitely recommend!
Jonathan Bond
Made it just the way you suffered.
Arthur Crawford
My husband and I really enjoyed this recipe, and he asked that we put it into consistent rotation in our dinner menu! The only changes I made were garbanzos instead of great northern beans (that was what we had) and I used dried beans that I had soaked overnight, measuring out 2.5 cups after soaking. To cook the whole soup, I used a pressure cooker, still following the recipe as is but simply cooking all ingredients except the greens on high pressure for 30 minutes. The flavor was rich and hearty; I topped mine with parmesan and served it with cheese bread!
Roy Mckay
This is my go to recipe for bean soup! I have made it as written and made adjustments based on the ingredients I’ve had. My family loved it when I added leftover ham. My vegan kids loved it when I made it as written. You can’t go wrong with this. Thank you for sharing.

 

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