This creamy butter bean soup with curly kale and lemon is both delicious and nutritious. Hearty and filling, it is quick and easy to make and freezes well.
🍴Why you will love this recipe
Butter beans are awesome, aren't they?! Cheap, tasty and packed with goodness (in the form of protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals), there's a good reason why you see them popping up in so many of my recipes.
In this soup, half the beans are blitzed to a velvety smooth purée whilst the other half are left whole to add a chunky texture. The finished soup is so deliciously creamy, you won't believe it doesn't contain half a tub of double cream!
Lemon juice is the perfect finishing touch - don't be tempted to skip it. It really lifts that 'beany' flavour to something so much more fresh, zingy and memorable!
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👩🏽🍳 How to make your Butter Bean Soup
For a full, printable recipe with ingredients and detailed instructions, scroll to the bottom of this page 👇🏼.
Trim and slice the leek and onion. Peel and crush the garlic cloves. Fry all for 3-4 minutes until soft.
Add one of the tins of butter beans (save the other for later), simmer with vegetable stock, then blitz to a very smooth purée.
Add the second tin of butter beans and simmer for a further 5 minutes. Add curly kale, parsley and lemon juice. Taste, adjust seasoning and serve.
🔪 Top Tips & FAQs
Keep blitzing the soup at step 4 until it is velvety-smooth. It can be tempting to stop after 10 seconds when it is just puréed, but the texture will be so much better if you keep going for a minute or two.
For a totally smooth soup, just blitz the whole lot together at the end.
If you don't have butter beans handy, this is just as good made with cannellini beans instead.
Yes, this soup freezes really well and is ideal for batch-cooking for the freezer in individual portions. You can defrost a portion in the microwave or a saucepan. Adjust the consistency of the soup after defrosting - you may need to add a little more water, and check seasoning before serving.
The soup actually gets better after a day in the fridge allowing the flavours to mellow. It will keep for 3-4 days as long as it is in an airtight container in the fridge.
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🍽 If you liked that...
.... you might also enjoy these vegan recipes from The Veg Space:
📖 Recipe
Butter Bean Soup with kale and lemon
Ingredients
- 1 leek
- 1 onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 x 400g tins of butterbeans
- 50 g curly kale tough stalks removed
- 750 g vegetable stock
- handful fresh parsley
- ½ lemon
Instructions
- Trim and slice the leek and onion, and peel and crush the garlic cloves.
- Heat the oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the leek, onion and garlic for 3-4 minutes until soft.
- Drain and rinse just one of the tins of butterbeans and add to the pan, along with the vegetable stock. Season well with salt and black pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Use a hand blender to blitz the soup to a thick, creamy consistency (this may take 1-2 minutes, keep going!).
- Drain and rinse the second tin of butterbeans and add it to the soup. Return to the heat and simmer for a further 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, remove any tough stalks from the kale and finely chop the leaves. Finely chop the parsley.
- Stir the kale and parsley through the soup and add the lemon juice. Taste and adjust seasoning then serve.
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Free 4-Week Vegan Meal Plan
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For more quick and easy vegan recipes take a look at my latest book Vegan in 15.
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Heather Kirby says
Hi
This looks like a fabulous recipe especially for bean phobic teenagers! Do you think it would make a good pasta sauce…hoping so!
Kate Ford says
Ooh that's a nice idea - yes it is quite thick and creamy so imagine it would be lovely with pasta. Enjoy! Xx
Andrea says
Looks so creamy smooth and delicious. Love how easy it is to make too! Perfect for a quick meal.
Helen says
I love butterbeans, and I've been looking for some new soup ideas.... it must be fate! LOL. Bookmarking this to try very soon 🙂
Claudia Lamascolo says
What a great recipe and I have everything here to make it we just love these beans a must try!
Suja md says
We really like this recipe. Never knew it was this easy to make. Will be trying without further delay!
Janice (@FarmersgirlCook) says
So glad to know I'm not the only one with half a bag of limp kale in the bottom of the fridge! This soup looks like a great way to use it up and enjoy a tasty lunch.
Helen @ Fuss Free Flavours says
A lovely entry for #creditcrunchmunch, I cannot get enough kale!
Camilla @FabFood4All says
I love kale soup and love your addition of butterbeans:-) Fabulous photography! Thanks for entering #CreditCrunchMunch!
Chris @thinlyspread says
Oh delicious deliciousness! I am a huge butterbean fan and combined with kale makes this a delicious and nutricious sounding soup!
Lisa says
Thanks so much for sharing with NCR. Such a nourishing soup and a great way to use butter beans.
Choclette says
Ooh I bet this tastes good. Kale has such a nice flavour and I really like butter beans. Annoying CT can't eat them for some reason, so I very rarely get them. That ThermoCook is just great for soups.
Jan says
Ooooh I like kale and really love the addition of butterbeans, I have to try this soon. The ThermoCook really does make soups easily; thanks for the link to mine.
Lucy @ BakingQueen74 says
Butterbeans are my favourite in soups, so I'll have to try your kale version ASAP. Wish I had a Thermocook as they look so convenient, great that you have given instructions for those of us only with a pan too 🙂
Natalie Tamara says
This looks delicious and very hearty, ideal for a winter lunch. I rarely cook with butterbeans either but funnily enough, my most recent recipe is also butterbean-based!
From your Veganuary updates it looks like you've been cooking some amazing vegan food throughout January. How have you found it overall? I've been taking part too and really enjoyed it. I usually only cook vegan food at home anyway but it's meant some changes when I eat out but it's not been as hard as I'd feared 🙂
Dannii @ Hungry Healthy Happy says
What a super green soup! I love adding kale to my soups for a nice veggie boost and this one sounds delicious.
Ceri @Natural Kitchen Adventures says
So many lovely seasonal ingredients in here and love love love butterbeans too. Such a creamy way of adding protein into a soup!
Deborah ShireGardener says
I love kale and butter beans so will make this soon as they are always on hand in my kitchen. Looking at the list of ingredients, I think it will freeze quite well {I'm the only lover of kale in the house!}
Shaheen says
I love kale and I like butter beans so this soup is calling to me. Thanks for linking to my recipe too, most appreciated.