This is another super quick dinner recipe that is hearty, healthy, filling and the longest part of this recipe is cooking the bacon. 🙂 You could easily make this bean and bacon soup vegetarian by using vegetable stock and leaving out the bacon, but for non vegetarians the bacon makes this soup.
This recipe uses canned beans, so no soaking and long cooking time. By the time it is done, you’d never know you were eating canned beans. Carrots, celery, onions and garlic flavor the broth, as well as tomato sauce and my trusty chicken powder to up the flavor (is it obvious how much I love that stuff?). You cold easily add extra veggies to this too like spinach or kale and some small diced sweet potato or zucchini.
I have talked before about my love of cooking bacon in the oven because of how little mess it makes. You can read about how to do that in my post on Bodega Sandwiches. It is the only method I use to cook bacon because it is sooooo easy.
I decided to serve this with some copycat Texas Roadhouse Rolls (recipe coming soon for those). Disclaimer, I have never eaten at Texas Roadhouse, but I love these rolls.
Quick Bean and Bacon Soup
Ingredients
- 1 pkg bacon cooked and diced (save a bit of bacon fat for the soup if you are so inclined)
- 1 onion diced
- 2 carrots diced
- 3 ribs celery diced
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 4 cups chicken broth
- 1-2 tsp chicken powder to taste
- 3 cans great northern beans
- 1 8 oz can tomato sauce plain, not the ones with basil etc added
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp thyme
- 1/4 tsp dried rosemary crushed
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Cook and dice the bacon, saving a small amount of bacon fat to fry to vegetables if you like. You can use olive oil instead if you prefer.
- Heat the oil/bacon fat over medium in a soup pot.
- Add the onions, garlic, carrot and celery and cook until they soften.
- Add the broth, chicken powder, and seasonings. Then add the beans. Reduce to a simmer and let cook 30 minutes to meld the flavors.
- Remove half the soup and blend until smooth in a blender, or use an immersion blender to blend until it is partially smooth but with some chunkiness to it.
- Return to the pot and add the tomato sauce and 1/2 of the bacon. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve with the extra bacon on the side to add on top while eating.