When you’re pinching pennies and trying to ‘make do’ with what you have on hand, it’s really integral to get a feel for substituting when cooking. There have been plenty of times where I’ve been in the middle of making something and had to put everything on hold to run to the store to pick up a missing ingredient- or I’ll send Andy for something I thought I had, but it turned out I didn’t. The best thing about being able to adapt is that sometimes you come up with a dish that’s even better than the original. Sometimes you just come up with another variation that you can make a note of by the recipe for another time. Last night’s soup was definitely one of those adaptable ones.
My original intention and plan for the week had been a potato and ham chowder type of soup, but when I mentioned that to Andy he asked about a bean type soup- like the Northwoods Bean Soup which is a perennial favorite here. At first I discarded his idea, but then I came right back to it because I didn’t see why I couldn’t just use ham in the soup instead of the kielbasa originally called for. Yesterday morning I went to grab some dried beans to cook up for the soup and looked over my options. Originally, the soup calls
for canned white beans. I was already making a substitution by cooking my own beans, and when I grabbed the small navy beans, I decided to put them back and instead grab a package of cranberry beans. I was really impressed by these beans the last time I cooked with them, and I thought they’d make a decent pot of soup.
Fast forward several hours later and I’m assembling my soup using the recipe. I look at the very last step that says to add some baby spinach leaves. I have baby spinach leaves, but we really like spinach in our salads, and the kids really don’t like greens in soup. My thought then was that as long as the kids were going to pick around the greens, I should use a green I really want to use, like some kale I have in the freezer yet.
And in the end, I had a very delicious soup- exactly what I wanted. All my substitutions worked perfectly, and as I slurped up my soup, I thought of all the other possibilities- smoked turkey instead of the pork products, black beans instead of white beans, adding a few sweet potatoes with the beans… There’s just an endless supply of options when you really start to think about it.
Northwoods Bean Soup
from Cooking Light magazine
Cooking spray1 cup baby carrots, halved
1 cup chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
7 ounces turkey kielbasa, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
4 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 (15.8-ounce) cans Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed
1 (6-ounce) bag fresh baby spinach leaves
Directions:
Heat a large saucepan coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add carrots, onion, garlic, and kielbasa; sauté 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to medium; cook 5 minutes. Add the broth, Italian seasoning, pepper, and beans. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes.
Place 2 cups of the soup in a food processor or blender, and process until smooth. Return the pureed mixture to pan. Simmer an additional 5 minutes. Remove soup from heat. Add the spinach, stirring until spinach wilts.