White Bean and Kale Soup Recipe (2024)

FAQs

When should I add kale to my soup? ›

In most cases, we recommend adding kale towards the end, when the soup is almost ready and you are happy with its taste and texture. Kale can be ready in as little as 5 to 30 minutes if you like it buttery tender.

Russian Kale

Compared to other kale varieties, Russian kales are on the tenderer, milder, and sweeter side, making them an excellent and delicious green for salads and soups.

You can thicken soup by adding flour, cornstarch, or another starchy substitute. For the best results, never add flour or cornstarch directly to your soup. If you do, it will clump up on top. Instead, ladle a small amount of broth into a separate bowl and let it cool.

Yes, kale can become overcooked if left in the soup for too long. It is best to add kale towards the end of the cooking time to prevent it from becoming too wilted or losing its vibrant green color.

For example, tossing in some dried fruit helps balance the bitter with some sweet. If you eat meat, you can try adding in some sausage or bacon, perhaps to a soup or stew, to cut the bitterness. Minced garlic, olive oil, and salt are also simple ingredients that can transform the flavor of a bitter kale dish.

Massages make everyone easier to deal with, and kale is no different. Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but this step is a game-changer for raw or slightly cooked preparations, as it breaks down kale's cellular walls, making it much more tender.

Cutting the stems crossways shortens the fibres, much as with a tough steak, making them perfectly edible and preventing waste. Cut this way, the stems can be cooked in the same way as the rest of the leaf: sauteed, boiled or steamed.

Making vegetable soup? Chop up those kale stems and add them into the mix. Whether you are keeping it chunky, minestrone-style, or making a creamy purée, this vegetable will add a nice, earthy flavor.

Bitter greens are leafy greens or vegetables that have an intense bitter flavor profile. They include kale, mustard greens, collards, turnip greens, broccoli rabe, radicchio, chicory, and endive. The bitterness comes from chemical compounds called glucosinolates that can be found in the Brassica family.

What is the secret ingredient to thicken soup? ›

You probably already know that potatoes are a great thickener for homemade soup. Even if you don't purée the soup with a blender, potatoes release starch as they cook — thickening the broth with a satisfying velvety consistency.

Kale is richer in Vitamin C, while spinach has more folate, vitamins A, and K. Though kale and spinach hail from entirely different plant families, they're often used interchangeably in recipes ranging from salads to soups to smoothies.

“If you were to boil kale, you're going to have heat, and heat will denature the antioxidants, so vitamin C will get destroyed. Basically, it will leach into the water,” Sherry Gray, MPH, RD, a registered dietitian and extension educator at the University of Connecticut, told Verywell.

For most vegetable soup recipes, this means the carrots, onions, and celery. Add the garlic just before adding the broth, so that it can infuse the whole soup as it simmers. Tender veggies with a higher water content, like green beans and zucchini, should be added towards the end of cooking and simmered briefly.

So in general we can say that by weight, raw kale has more vitamins & minerals than cooked kale… by this really doesn't matter, because you would have to eat a bucket of raw kale to come close to the nutritional benefit of simply eating a cup cooked kale.

Cooking affects the nutritional value

Raw kale has a bitterness that can be reduced by cooking it. Still, studies have shown that cooking it may reduce its content of nutrients, including antioxidants, vitamin C, and several minerals ( 2 , 7 ).

Usually, you add kale, spinach, etc in a few minutes before the soup is done, not at the beginning.