Williams-Sonoma White bean soup

I get the monthly catalog from Williams-Sonoma and I love drooling over all the fancy gadgets and pans. PLUS, they always showcase a handful of recipes. When I read the recipe for this, the one thing that stuck out is that you can easily make this in under a half hour, and you don’t need a ton of ingredients. You can get pancetta from the deli, I asked for 1/4 pound and used less than half for this recipe.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup chopped pancetta
1 TB. olive oil
1/2 yellow onion, chopped (I used red onion instead)
1 carrot, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped – didn’t have that
4 cloves of garlic, sliced
5 cups chicken broth OR 5 cups water with 5 tsp. chicken soup base.
3 cans of chick peas (garbonzo beans) drained
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-reggiano cheese (or just plain parmesan cheese)
1 tsp. freshly grated thyme
salt and pepper to taste

First I drained the beans

In a large pot, add the olive oil and pancetta, and cook that for about 5 minutes. Add the onion, carrot and celery, thyme, salt and pepper and cook for another 8 minutes, cooking on low heat, stirring occasionally.

Add the water and chicken soup base (or 5 cups of chicken broth) the beans and I had leftover cauliflower, so I threw that in the pot too!

Next, I added the beans and cauliflower I cooked that for about 8 minutes until the cauliflower was soft when poked with a fork.

Next, blend that in a blender, or use an immersion blender and blend until smooth. Just a reminder, when blending hot soup, do NOT use the top insert, you can just put a towel over the top so the steam escapes and it doesn’t blow up and all over your kitchen! (I’ve done that before and it isn’t a fun clean up!) Return the soup to the pot.

Add the cheese and stir until the cheese is melted.

It turned out great! I love the flavor of the pancetta in it! It’s the very first time I’ve used pancetta in a recipe or bought pancetta at the store in my life!