Escarole White Bean Soup

This week’s bean dish was a white bean soup with escarole and ham.

I was going to make a vegetable soup with yellow eye beans, but when I was in the grocery store, I spotted escarole, which I don’t see in many stores around here, so I bought a head of it and resolved to make some soup. I hadn’t cooked escarole before, so I was excited to give it a shot.

I started with Rancho Gordo’s recipe from their new book:

ESCAROLE SOUP WITH GIANT WHITE BEANS AND COUNTRY HAM – Rancho Gordo

A favorite soup from our newest book, The Bean Book. Escarole, or broad-leaved endive, is another bitter vegetable that is often used raw. In this soup, you’ll wilt the escarole just a little so it retains some of its body and releases more flavor. To make this dish vegetarian, omit the ham. 3 tablespoons olive oil or

www.ranchogordo.com

I made two small tweaks to the recipe:

I used a small cottage ham instead of country ham. I used the whole pound of ham, so I increased the amount of other ingredients to keep the ratios the same.

I used duck stock, which is what I had. It was rich and delicious. I think I would have preferred a nice vegetable stock, though. I’m running very low on stock right now. I need to make more. The duck stock was the last container of any homemade stock I had in the freezer.

This was a relatively quick recipe to make (for a bean soup). I soaked the large white lima beans that morning to speed up the cooking time. Once those were cooked, everything else came together in about 30 minutes.

This was good, but probably not going into the standard rotation. Worth having once a year when escarole is in season, though. Or when you have some leftover ham.

Next time, I’ll use vegetable stock and add more red wine vinegar than the recipe calls for.