🇳🇱 Netherlands and 🇧🇪 Belgium
Bruine bonensoepDutch brown bean soup
A thick Dutch soup of brown beans in meat stock with soup vegetables, bacon and smoked sausage (rookworst), seasoned with bonenkruid (savory) and sometimes nutmeg or allspice, served with bread.
Origin and history
Brown beans were an everyday food of poorer Dutch families, and the soup is tied in popular memory to the Bartje books by Anne de Vries (mid-1930s), set in a village in Drenthe, in which the boy is tired of the brown beans he is served. A thick winter soup of beans, bacon and smoked sausage, it is cooked in the Netherlands and Flanders.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 2 h 30 min
- Hands-on
- 30 min
Ingredients
- 300 g10 oz (1 1/2 cups) dried brown beans (bruine bonen), soaked overnight; pinto beans are the closest substitute
- 150 g5 oz smoked bacon (gerookt spek), diced
- 1.5 litres1 1/2 quarts meat stock or water, beef or pork stock; the water the beans soaked in is not used
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 leek, sliced
- 1 small celeriac (knolselderij), peeled, diced (about 150 g / 1 cup)
- 2 carrots, diced
- 2 potatoes, peeled, diced
- 2 tbsp tomato paste or 2 diced tomatoes
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp bonenkruid (dried savory), or thyme if you cannot find it
- 5 allspice berries (piment), or 3 cloves and 5 juniper berries
- 1 rookworst (Dutch smoked sausage), about 250 g / 9 oz; kielbasa works
- salt and pepper, to taste
Method
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1. Soak the beans overnight in plenty of cold water, then drain and rinse.
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2. Fry the diced bacon in a large soup pot over medium heat until the fat runs, then add the onion and cook until soft, about 5 minutes.
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3. Stir in the bonenkruid, allspice and tomato paste and fry 3 minutes, stirring.
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4. Add the beans, bay leaves and stock, bring to a boil, then simmer gently, partly covered, for 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes until the beans are soft.
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5. Add the leek, celeriac, carrots and potatoes and simmer another 25 to 30 minutes until all are tender.
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6. Lift out about a quarter of the beans and set them aside; mash or blend the rest in the pot until the soup is thick, thinning with water or stock if needed.
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7. Return the whole beans, add the rookworst whole and warm it through for 10 minutes, then take it out, slice it and put it back.
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8. Season with salt and pepper (the bacon and sausage are salty) and serve hot with buttered brown bread.
Notes
- Total time: 2 h 30 min (plus soaking).
- Brown beans, bacon and smoked sausage, thickened by partly mashing the beans, are the common core of Dutch recipes. Older and home recipes cook a pig's trotter (varkenspoot) or beef in the stock; modern ones use stock cubes.
- Bonenkruid is savory; thyme and bay can stand in. Some cooks add cloves, juniper berries or nutmeg.
- A quick supermarket version uses canned brown beans and a stick blender, ready in 30 minutes.
- It is a close relative of snert (the Dutch split-pea soup) and tastes better made a day ahead; add water when reheating, as it thickens in the fridge.
- In Indonesia (Manado) the soup survives as sup brenebon, with a trotter broth and added spices.
Adapted from Albert Heijn Allerhande: Bruinebonensoep met spek en rookworst, MAX Vandaag: Bruine bonensoep van Alie Dijkstra, and The Dutch Table: Bruine bonensoep.
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.