(If you’re new to cooking with dry beans, read up on everything you need to know about dry beans here.)
This colorful soup is spicy with a bright, lemony taste. The recipe calls for ground turkey, but you can use leftover turkey if you like. Serve with a crusty baguette or bread sticks for a filling meal.
Ingredients:
1 bunch (4 or 5 stems) of greens, such as kale, broccoli rabe, mustard greens or collard greens
1 cup dry white beans
½ pound ground turkey
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, diced
1 large carrot, diced
1 Tbsp tomato paste
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 quart chicken stock
1 tsp salt, plus more to taste
1 Tbsp finely grated fresh ginger
¾ tsp ground cumin, plus more to taste
⅛ tsp red-pepper flakes, plus more to taste
1 cup chopped fresh, soft herbs, such as parsley, mint, dill, basil, oregano, chives or a combination
½ cup fresh lemon juice, more to taste
Directions
Put beans into a pressure cooker with 4 cups of water. Bring to pressure and start the timer. Cook for 30-35 minutes.
While beans are cooking, prepares the ingredients. Peel and dice the onion and carrot, mince the garlic and fresh herbs. Rinse the greens and remove any heavy stems. Chop the greens into bite-size pieces. Set all these ingredients aside.
Heat oil a large pot over medium-high for a minute. Add onion and carrot, and sauté until very soft and brown at the edges, about 7 to 10 minutes.
When the onion is golden, add tomato paste and spices and sauté until the paste darkens, about 1 minute. Add turkey, garlic, ginger and salt, and sauté, breaking up the meat with your spoon, until turkey is browned, about 4 to 7 minutes.
Add stock and cooked beans, and bring to a simmer. Let simmer until the soup has thickened a bit, about 15 to 25 minutes. Add more salt if needed.
If you like a thicker broth, you can smash some of the beans with the back of the spoon to release their starch.
Add the greens to the pot and simmer until they are very soft but still bright green, about 5 minutes.
Stir herbs and lemon juice into the pot. Taste and add more salt, cumin and lemon if needed. You want the flavor a little spicy (cumin) and bright-tasting (lemon). The salt will help mellow the lemon flavor. Do not boil as this will dull the lemon flavor.
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Notes:
Ground turkey has gotten expensive and is rarely on sale. So I often make this with my home canned turkey or chicken. The broth from the canned turkey is about a cup and then I add a pint of home canned broth and one cup of water. Since my home canned broth is much stronger than the store bought kind, it still tastes great even with added water.
If you don’t have a pressure cooker, soak beans overnight in 4 cups of water for 8-10 hours. Drain, add 4 cups water to the beans and cook for 35-45 minutes, until tender.
OR
Substitute with 2 15-oz cans of beans.
