Sausage and Bean Soup with Pasta
January 2, 2010
Baby, it's cold outside - the high for today is supposed to be 16 degrees! Here is a hearty soup to get you through the winter. This soup, along with a green salad and some nice bread, is a great dinner for a chilly night. This soup is loaded with sausage, beans and ditalini pasta. It's really a pretty traditional "Pasta e Fagioli" soup, but with sausage. I've made the soup with turkey sausage, but you can use any sausage you like.
I've used dried beans to make the soup. You can certainly use canned, but if you've never cooked with dried beans, you should try it. Some people are confused about dried beans and don't know how to soak them and cook them. But there really is no mystery to it at all - it's very easy. Soaking simply softens the beans so that they have a shorter cooking time. That's all. And you don't really even have to soak them. If you forget to soak them, simply cook them longer. I just throw the beans in a pot and cover them with water and let them soak all day. I drain them, add fresh water and then cook them until they are tender. That's it. And I get my beans from Steve Sando at Rancho Gordo. He produces the best dried beans on the market today. If you are interested in cooking more with beans, check out the great cookbook he wrote last year, Heirloom Beans, filled with terrific recipes using beans and lots of tips on how to cook with beans.
Sausage and Bean Soup with Pasta
serves 6 or more
for a printable recipe, click here
1 cup dried cannellini or cellini beans or 1 15-ounce can of any beans you like, drained
1 pound ground sausage, turkey or pork
1/2 medium onion, diced
1/2 medium carrot, diced
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
6 to 8 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
1 cup ditalini pasta, or any small pasta
grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
If using dried beans, place them in a pot, cover with cold water and let soak for several hours or overnight. Drain.
In a large pot, brown the sausage. Remove from pot. If there is a lot of fat left in the pot, pour this out but do not wipe out pot. Add onion, carrot and olive oil and saute for 2-3 minutes until soft. Add garlic and saute about a minute more. Add the tomatoes, 6 cups of the chicken broth, thyme, bay leaf, some salt and pepper, the drained beans and the sausage and cover the pot. Cook for an hour over low heat, at a gentle simmer.
If using dried beans, check for doneness at this point. (If using canned beans, add the pasta now.) If the beans are not soft enough, cover the pot again and cook for another 30 minutes or until the beans are soft. Add the pasta and cook, uncovered, until the pasta is tender. Check the seasoning and add more salt and pepper to taste. If the soup is too thick for your liking, you can add more chicken broth.
Serve with grated cheese on top and an extra drizzle of olive oil.
Variation: You can add a couple of handfuls of fresh chopped greens like spinach, chard, etc. for the last 15 or 20 minutes of cooking time if you like.
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Reader Comments (17)
I'm a bean nut. We have a guy in Nashville Farmer's market who sells about 20 kinds loose. Also, here we can get a lot of beans FRESH and hull them ourselves, like cranberry beans. My husband would like to come over for this soup. Sausage and beans is in his top three dishes.You cook just like my family. (actually probably better). :)
Looks perfect! And I have everything I need to make this! Thanks!
Looks great! I wish I had a bowl of this right now. The high here today is 34 - that is really cold for Alabama! Thanks for the recipe. Can't wait to try it.
I printed this recipe and purchased the few ingredients we didn't have on-hand. My mom surprised me and actually made this soup while the rest of my family and I were at the gym. My mother never cooks and truly surprised us all by making it- It was excellent. Thank you very much for sharing this recipe. I just discovered your website and really enjoy the way you present Italian food!
Elaine,
I made this last night and it was delicious. Eric and I both loved it! I found out today that two of my friends also made it last night. It was a great thing to make on a cold blustry night.
Thanks.
Just for clarification, I added the sausage back in at the point where you simmer the soup for an hour. I didn't see that in the recipe but assumed that's where you would have added it.
Thank you for the recipe..soup's cooking right now!
From The Italian Dish:
Carissa: Thank you for pointing that out - I fixed it!
I absolutely love this soup recipe! I can eat soup every day and not get sick of it - but I've never made a soup like this one before - thanks and Happy New Year!
This just looks so wonderful, Elaine. It's 5 degrees outside and this sounds perfect. I, too, love Rancho Gordo beans, but I didn't know about his cookbook. Thank you!
I always called this Fazool
Capiche Paysanne?
every time i make one of your soup recipes i have no leftovers! loved this one.
Question: it looks like in the photos that the sausage is actually sausage meat that is not pressed into a casing. Is that accurate? Could you make this by cooking actual sausage links and then slicing them into wheels into the soup? This look so scrumptious, I want to make it this weekend!
From The Italian Dish:
Kim:
I used turkey sausage in links for this recipe. I simply squeezed the meat out of the casings and broke it up as I browned it. You can use any sausage you like and yes, you could even use links and just slice them into coins. That would work just fine.
My pot of this soup is cooking right now! I can't wait. Just to double check: I am putting the pasta in raw and cooking it the soup. That's what the recipe implies. Also the change that you made to the recipe in terms of adding the sausage back to the soup to simmer has to also be made in the print copy of the recipe.
Thanks for dinner!
loved this recipe! delicious:)
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delicious Sausage and Bean Soup with Pasta recipe, I wish I could to eat pasta, but last time I ate pasta and took Generic Viagra I had some some problems in my sexual performance, that's why I don't eat pasta when I know I will get lucky later!