Award Winner Vegetarian White Bean and Vegetable Soup

First place Whole Foods contest winner!! This white bean vegetable soup is loaded with vegetables and is hearty enough to stand on its own as a main dinner dish with only a crust of bread on the side.

There's a bit of prep work to this soup, but I've included shortcuts in the post for you.

Jump to Recipe

Want to make this recipe perfectly the first time? I want to help with that. So, check out this Table of Contents to see which sections of this post will help you the most.

Jump to:

• ❤️ Why you'll love this vegetable bean soup
• 🧅 Ingredients + Notes
• 🌶 What is harissa?
• 🔪 Recommended Equipment
• 📝 Instructions Overview
• ⏰ Meal Prep Tips to Simplify and Save Time
• 👩‍🍳 Vegetable Prepping Tips
• 📦 What's the best way to store leftovers?
• 🥬 Make it a vegan white bean soup
• 🍽 Side Dish Ideas
• 📇 More Hearty Soups
• White Bean Vegetable Soup

Bean soups with vegetables are a favorite of mine all year long, but especially during soup season, when the weather turns chilly. That's when I pull out a large soup pot to make a batch (or two) of hot soup to warm my family up from the inside out. If it's soup weather where you are, check out these 10 Cozy Vegetarian Soups Perfect for Fall. They're favorites of mine, and of our readers!

This bean soup recipe was inspired by a contest Whole Foods was running a few years ago. I don't remember the exact challenge, but it involved, well, whole foods. And what better way to feature them than in a hearty soup featuring the fall harvest.

If you want a homemade vegetable soup that's less filling with less veggie prep this is a great soup that's still hearty enough for lunch and a light dinner.

❤️ Why you'll love this vegetable bean soup

• It's hearty, filling and absolutely delicious.
• Flexible for vegetarians, vegans and meat eaters.
• Warms you up on a chilly night.
• Great way to get kids to eat more veggies!
• The only thing you need is some crusty bread to go with it, slathered with butter.
• Homemade soup is a perfect way to use up odds and ends of onions, carrots and celery in your refrigerator.
• Perfect for a crowd.

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🌶 What is harissa?

The harissa in this recipe brings a rich flavor, and just a hint of heat to this soup. It's what makes this soup special. So don't ignore this ingredient.

Harissa is a spicy, aromatic chile paste popular in Middle Eastern and North African dishes. If you're interested in making your own, here's how to make harissa in your own kitchen (it makes a fabulous holiday gift), or purchase it in most markets in the ethnic foods aisles. I buy the spicy version of Mina Harissa, but they also have a mild version.

There's range of heat in purchased harissa, so my best recommendation is to start with half of what's called for in this recipe, and then add more to your own taste.

📝 Instructions Overview

Detailed instructions for making this white bean vegetable soup are in the recipe card below, but here's an overview!

Step 1

Prep. Prep the leek, onion, carrots, celery, butternut squash and Serrano pepper.

Step 2

Sauté. Warm a little olive oil in a large pot over medium heat, and dump all the prepped vegetables into it. Toss with a large wooden spoon, and sauté until just starting to soften.

Add the garlic, dried herbs, salt and pepper. Cook for a couple minutes until fragrant.

Step 3

Make it a soup. Add the broth, a chunk of Parmesan rind, white beans, chicken, harissa, spinach and tomatoes. Simmer for 10 minutes to mingle the flavors.

Step 4

Serve. Serve piping hot in large bowls and top with a shaving of Parmesan cheese.

⏰ Meal Prep Tips to Simplify and Save Time

Most of the time in making this amazing soup is spent with meal prep.

• If your market has it, purchase onion and celery already diced.
• Many markets sell butternut squash already peeled and diced. You may need to dice it smaller into ¾" pieces, but it would still save you from peeling the squash.
• I cook beans from dried beans when I have time, but I often use canned beans for convenience purposes. And there is a wide variety of canned white beans to choose from.

👩‍🍳 Vegetable Prepping Tips

If you don't typically cut up some of the veggies called for in this recipe, here are some vegetable prep tips I learned in culinary school that will help you!

Prepping leeks

• Leeks grow in sandy soil, so they need more of a cleaning than most vegetables you bring into the kitchen.
• Slice off the dark green leafy part of the leeks, and the roots. Then slice the bulb in half lengthwise. Hold each bulb half under the water, while feathering out the leaves. There will likely be sandy mud in between most of the leaves.

Prepping butternut squash

• Slice off the top and bottom of the squash. If the skin is too tough to easily cut through, pop the squash in the microwave oven for 3 - 5 minutes (depending on the size of the squash), and try again. Since the microwave time is so short, there's no need to puncture the squash in advance.
• Slice the butternut in half, lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds and pulp with a spoon. Any spoon works, but a grapefruit spoon works really well with the stringy pulp.

• Peel the squash using a vegetable peeler (I prefer a Y-shaped peeler, pictured below). Start at either the top or bottom edge, and pull the peeler towards you. If you don't have a vegetable peeler, use a sharp chef's knife. A knife doesn't work quite as well because of the hourglass shape of the squash.

• The easiest way to cut the squash into small cubes, is to start at the neck of the squash, and slice it across the width into ¾" thick slabs. Next, slice it up into cubes. The dice won't be consistent because of the shape of the squash and its scooped out bowl.

Prepping Serrano pepper

• The heat in these spicy peppers is in the pith and seeds. Using a chef's knife, slice off the stem first, and then slice in half, lengthwise.
• Angle the knife, and slide it up the length of the pepper to remove the pith and seeds.
• Next, slice into thin, long lengths, and finally across them to mince them.

Using canned tomatoes

• Purchase canned tomatoes that are peeled and left whole in a sauce. San Marzano tomatoes are the best quality, but there are others that may be less expensive.
• Remove four of the peeled tomatoes from the sauce using a fork, and coarsely quarter them. If the tomatoes are large, cut them into smaller bite-size chunks.
• Add the sliced tomatoes and their juices to the soup.

📦 What's the best way to store leftovers?

• Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. I save pasta sauce jars, and pour the soup in these.
• Freeze this bean soup in a freezer-safe container for up to 3 months.

🥬 Make it a vegan white bean soup

This soup is designed to be a plant-based soup, but I often add the rind of a wedge of Parmesan cheese to the soup as it cooks. This adds some salty umami to the soup. It's very easy to eliminate the rind, and any cheese you add on top when serving. Here are some ideas:

• Use plant-based Parmesan style cheese,
• Substitute nutritional yeast, or
• Eliminate the cheese altogether.

🍽 Side Dish Ideas

This is a very hearty soup, and needs little else. But bread is always a great partner of soups.

• Freshly baked bread is always a hit. If you're interested in making a yeasted bread, these Parmesan and Garlic Rolls are irresistible, as is this Aglio e Olio Pizza Bread.
• Or whip up a batch of Easy Buttermilk Cornbread or my Mexican cornbread.

📇 More Hearty Soups

Vegetable / Chicken and Rice Peasant Soup (this is another excellent soup with optional chicken for the meat-eaters),

Instant Pot Curried Lentil Soup,

Moroccan Chickpea Stew with Charred Eggplant and Tomatoes (based on one of my Ottolenghi favorites),

Summer Vegetable Soup with Farro,

White Bean and Kale Soup,

and this Cauliflower and White Bean Soup.