Garlicky white bean and greens stew
Soft white beans in a garlic broth with kale or cabbage, and bread to mop the bowl. Forty minutes from tins or frozen home-cooked beans.
This garlicky white bean and greens stew is a pot of soft beans in garlic broth with shredded greens, served with bread to mop the bowl. It takes about 40 minutes from tins, or from a batch of beans you have already cooked and frozen.
If you cook dried beans in bulk, as in our smoky red beans and rice, this is a good recipe to use them on, because the beans make up most of the pot and very little else is needed.
Ingredients for the white bean stew
- 2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 1 carrot, finely diced
- 1 celery stick, finely diced (optional)
- 4 garlic cloves, sliced
- A pinch of chilli flakes
- 1 tsp dried thyme or rosemary
- 2 tins (400 g each) cannellini or butter beans, drained, or about 500 g home-cooked beans
- 600 ml vegetable or chicken stock
- 200 g kale, cabbage or spinach, shredded
- 1 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar
- Salt and pepper
- Bread, to serve
Method
- Warm the oil in a pan and cook the onion, carrot and celery gently for about 8 minutes until soft.
- Add the garlic, chilli flakes and dried herb and cook for 1 to 2 minutes without letting the garlic brown.
- Add the beans and stock and simmer for 15 minutes. Crush about a quarter of the beans against the side of the pan to thicken the broth.
- Stir in the greens and cook for about 5 minutes until tender (spinach needs only 1 to 2 minutes).
- Season with salt, pepper and the lemon juice or vinegar, and serve with bread.
Budget swaps
- Dried beans: soak 250 g overnight and simmer for about an hour until soft. That gives roughly the same amount as two tins.
- Savoy or white cabbage is often lower per kilo than kale and holds up just as well.
- Day-old bread toasted and rubbed with a cut garlic clove suits this stew better than fresh bread.
- A cheese rind simmered with the beans adds flavour from something that might otherwise be thrown away.
Storage and leftovers
Keeps for 3 days in the fridge and freezes for up to 3 months. Leftovers can be blended with a little extra stock into a soup, or warmed through and spooned onto toast.
