🇮🇹 Italy
Pasta e fagioliItalian bean soup
An Italian soup of beans and small pasta, cooked in a flavoured base of oil or pork fat with aromatics. Its consistency ranges from soupy to nearly dry depending on the region.
Origin and history
Pasta e fagioli is a peasant dish found all over Italy, long called the meat of the poor because beans and a handful of pasta made a filling meal. Bean and grain soups go back to the Middle Ages, but today's borlotti and cannellini came from the Americas after 1492. Every region claims it: Veneto's pasta e fasoi with Lamon beans (IGP), Rome's with pork rind, Naples' with mixed pasta. Southern Italian emigrants took it to the United States as pasta fazool.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 2 h 15 min
- Hands-on
- 40 min
Ingredients
- 300 g10.5 oz (about 1½ cups) dried borlotti (cranberry) beans, soaked overnight in plenty of cold water
- 2 bay leaves
- 80 g2.8 oz lardo or unsmoked pancetta, finely chopped
- 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus more to serve
- 1 (about 150 g)1 (about 5 oz) onion, finely chopped
- 1 carrot, finely chopped
- 1 celery stalk, finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove, peeled and lightly crushed
- 1 sprig rosemary
- 1 tbsp tomato paste (concentrato di pomodoro)
- 250 g9 oz ditalini or other small pasta, or broken mixed pasta (pasta mista)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- grated Parmigiano Reggiano, optional, to serve
Method
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1. Drain the soaked beans, put them in a pot with 2 l (8½ cups) of fresh cold water and 1 bay leaf, and bring slowly to the boil.
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2. Simmer very gently, partly covered, for 1–1½ hours, until the beans are creamy all the way through; add salt only in the last 10 minutes. Keep the beans in their cooking liquid.
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3. In a large heavy pot, warm the olive oil and lardo over low heat until the fat starts to melt.
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4. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, rosemary and the second bay leaf and cook over low heat for 15 minutes, stirring now and then, until the vegetables are soft and golden but not browned.
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5. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for 1 minute.
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6. Add the beans with about 1.5 l (6⅓ cups) of their cooking liquid (top up with water if needed) and simmer for 15 minutes so the beans take on the flavour of the soffritto.
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7. Fish out the garlic, rosemary and bay leaves. Scoop out about a third of the beans with a little liquid, pass them through a food mill (or blend them) and stir the purée back into the pot.
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8. Bring the soup back to the boil, add the pasta and cook it in the soup, stirring often so it does not stick, until al dente; add a ladle of hot water whenever it gets too thick.
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9. Take the pot off the heat, check the salt and let it rest for 5 minutes; it should be dense and creamy, thick enough for a spoon almost to stand in it.
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10. Serve with a thread of raw olive oil, plenty of black pepper and, if you like, grated Parmigiano.
Notes
- Total time: 2 h 15 min, plus overnight soaking.
- This is the everyday northern and central Italian version: borlotti beans, a slow soffritto with pork fat and rosemary, part of the beans puréed to thicken, and small pasta cooked in the soup.
- Veneto (pasta e fasoi): made with Lamon beans from the Belluno area, a borlotti type protected as an IGP, with pork rind (cotenna) or lardo, potatoes, and fresh egg pasta cut by hand into strips or maltagliati. It is often eaten warm or even cold.
- Rome and Lazio (pasta e fagioli con le cotiche): pork rind is boiled separately until soft, cut into strips and simmered with the beans; it is served with pecorino romano.
- Naples: cannellini beans with garlic, chilli, a little tomato and parsley, and pasta mista (leftover short shapes mixed with broken long pasta). Pasta e fagioli con le cozze adds mussels and their liquor. In Emilia a Parmigiano rind goes into the pot.
- With canned beans: use 2 cans (400 g / 14 oz each), drained, and 1.2 l (5 cups) of light stock in place of the bean liquid. The soup will be less creamy, so purée a little more of the beans.
- For a vegetarian version, leave out the lardo and use 4 tbsp olive oil.
- Pasta keeps drinking the liquid. To make ahead, cook the soup up to step 7, refrigerate for up to 3 days, and cook the pasta in it just before serving; loosen leftovers with hot water.
- In Italian-American English the dish is called pasta fazool, from the southern pronunciation of fasule (beans).
Adapted from Dissapore: Pasta e fagioli, la ricetta tradizionale and Scatti di Gusto: Pasta e fagioli, ricetta napoletana, veneta, con le cotiche.
At the festivals
Served at 1 festival in United States.
Earlier editions
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January 25, 2025
🇺🇸 Amsterdam, New York, United States
7th Annual SoupFest
On the menu as Pasta Fagioli and Pasta Fagioli 72
By Lorenzo's Southside, Joe's Family, and Lyon Street Bar and Grill