Cannellini bean and garlic soup

This soup tasted great, but I do have to warn you....if you don't like onions you will not enjoy this soup.  It goes great with freshly grated Parmesan and a piece of toast.  The recipe does have salt and pepper in it but I suggest seasoning it to taste after you have served yourself.  Another suggestion, in preparation with the spinach I just de-stemmed it, cleaned it, and then cooked it up.  I found the peices of spinach to be a bit much so I suggest chopping the spinach just a bit to make the pieces a bit smaller.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

1 large sweet onion

8 cloves of garlic

2 tsp chopped fresh thyme (1/2 tsp dried thyme)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

2 cans of chicken broth (14.5 oz)

1 can of cannellini beans (15.5 oz) rinsed and drained

1 bag of baby leaf spinach (6 oz)

 

Before you start cooking chop up your garlic, onion, and clean your spinach.  The onion is prepared by cutting both ends of the onion then cutting it in half, turn it on its side and thinly slice the onion.  This will give you nice half circles of thin onion.                                  

In a deep sauce pan heat up 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Add the onion, garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper.   Cook for about ten minutes frequently stirring to prevent any burning.  Towards the end of the cook time start to add the chicken broth 1 tbsp at a time, stirring after each addition so the onions are able to brown.  I tried to show the end product of the onions when they were fully cooked but the color isn't showing very well in these pictures.  You can see the onion has changed color and has cooked down quite a bit.

After the onion mixture is done cooking add the beans, and the remaining chicken broth.  Bring the soup to a boil, and then lower the temperature to low.  Cover the soup and let it cook for 10 minutes.  When this is done remove from heat.

In a sauce pan heat up 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Add the spinach and toss it until the leaves have wilted.

I used a pair of tongs to toss the spinach for about 1 minute.  Don't over cook your greens!  When it looks like this remove it from the heat and add it too your soup.

Sprinkle with Parmesan, and enjoy.