Hearty Farty Nine Bean Soup

Beans, beans, the magical fruit

The more you eat, the more you toot

The more you toot, the better you feel

So we have beans at every meal!

-children's schoolyard song

Boys will want to eat this soup just because of that song...don't get me started on boys!

This is a thick hearty soup with beans, smoky sausage and kale. You need to think about making the soup a day ahead because you will need to soak the dried beans. You can buy bags of mixed beans or you can simply make a mix of your own favourite combination.

You will need:

• 2 cups of mixed dried beans/lentils
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 small onion
• 1 leek
• smoked sausage-(turkey or pork)
• 1 litre/box chicken broth
• 1 tomato
• 2 cups chopped kale
• 1 tbsp Italian seasoning 
• salt and pepper
• olive oil

Step 1: rinse beans under cold water until clear. Fill a bowl or pot with beans and enough water to cover beans. Let soak overnight.

Step 2: once the beans have  re hydrated you can drain the water. Refill pot with fresh water to cover and add smoked sausage. You can use a chunk of bacon, or pork sausage or for my friends who don't eat pork use a smoked turkey/chicken sausage. The point is you want something salty and smoky to flavour the beans while they cook.

Step 3: cook the beans for 2/1/2 -3 hours until tender. At this stage you can keep the existing water and then add the rest of the ingredients or what I do is drain the water and fill up pot with chicken broth. I do this to make the soup more like a broth instead of a stew and to make the beans easier to digest.

Step 4; in a small pan fry leeks, chopped onions and garlic in olive oil until lightly browned. Add to pot with beans.

Step 5: add chopped tomato, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper

Step 6: remove stems from kale and discard chop leaves into small slivers

Step 7: add chopped kale to pot and cook 10 minutes. Taste the soup. Add salt and pepper as needed.

Step 8: add small pasta and cook further 5-10 minutes.

Serve hot in a big bowl with a drizzle of olive oil and chunks of fresh bread.

Let the music begin!