Simply Delicious has a few New Orleans/Southern recipes–3-4: New Orleans Bean Soup is one of them. There are a lot of different takes on a “New Orleans Red Bean Soup” that exist out there–most of them have more exciting ingredients than this version. 🎺
I made another “New Orleans” recipe at the same time as this one–you can go back and read 12-29: New Orleans Beans and Pasta for what is essentially a pasta version of this dish. Either one is a hearty and relatively inexpensive meal. Since the two share a lot of ingredients, consider making both–they store and reheat well. 💰
I’ll admit it now: I used pinto beans instead of kidney beans (despite the latter being one of the focal parts of the dish) because A) that’s what I had and B) I’m not a huge fan of kidney beans.
Ingredients. I had lemon juice in the shot, but I actually went back and swapped it out for apple cider vinegar instead when I made the soup–I like the tang vinegar gives in a soup more so than lemon juice, and I think apple cider goes well with the ham & spices. Didn’t have veggie bouillon, so I used chicken, since this isn’t exactly vegetarian anyway.
Blurry picture of my sous chef prepping the veggies. 🔪
While he did that, I worked on the garlic. I didn’t even use cheater garlic this time!
Veggies cooking.
Added in the ham strips…
…and the kidney pinto beans, with bean water.
Brought it to a boil and tossed the bouillon on top, adding the other ingredients after that.
Final soup bowl, with a bay leaf garnish (hey, they did it!). It was decent, but nothing too exciting–try one of the varieties I linked at the beginning for something a bit more spicy. 🌶
Grade: B+
