Great Northern Bean Soup, what’s not to love … and with bacon? White beans simmered and flavored with carrot, celery, onion and Herbs. Add bacon and you’ve got a great dinner for a crisp Fall evening. Cooking the beans in the slow cooker all day makes this an easy fix for dinner.
If you have a thing for bacon, the Internet will gladly return about a zillion recipes to use for this popular ingredient.
But if you have a thing for the slightly less rock star white bean, there aren’t that many ways to use them. Soup? Oh, or maybe a salad or two.
I simply can’t resist buying beans, something about them brings out the comfort in me.
Why Are Great Northern White Beans a Good Choice for Soups
And I love picking up white beans, Navy Beans, Great Northern Beans, Cannellini Beans. They’re easy to cook and creamy by nature. For this soup recipe I chose Great Northern Beans.
A bit larger than Navy Beans but smaller than Cannellini beans, medium-sized Great Northern beans are known for their mild, nutty flavor and firm flesh.
Great in soups and stews, they hold their shape better than Navy beans, take on the flavors of the foods they’re cooked with, and are commonly used in French cassoulets. And speaking of French cassoulets, it’s on my list of things to make.
So before we get to this Great Northern Bean Soup, let’s talk about our Fall trip to view the Aspens.
Inspiration for This White Bean Soup Recipe
This recipe was inspired by a recent trip to the Buena Vista area to take in the color extravaganza show that our Colorado Aspen’s put on each Fall.
A side trip found us wandering up a dirt road on our way to St. Elmo, a ghost town in the middle of our Sawatch Mountain Range. Founded in 1880, nearly 2,000 people settled in this town when mining for gold and silver started.
Even though St. Elmo is considered a ghost town it is still inhabited. The old mining roads are now used as 4-wheeling trails and Chalk Creek attracts fishing.
The town is well preserved, the General Store is open in the Summer months and it’s an easy and scenic drive. And of course, there’s the legend that the ghost of Annabelle Stark lives on with the part-time residents, believing that she continues to protect her property from vandals or trespassers. This is a photo of a cabin inside the town limits.
The Fall colors triggered the need for a perfect Fall soup as soon as we arrived back in Highlands Ranch. This fit the bill perfect.
Recipe for Great Northern Bean Soup with Bacon
I hope you give this Great Northern Bean Soup recipe a try. And if you do, please come back and let me know how you liked it and give the recipe a star rating.
Your feedback is valuable to me for developing future recipes. And if you have a favorite Crock Pot Great Northern Bean Soup Recipe, or any white bean soup recipe, let me know, I’d love to give it a try.
More Soup Recipes with White Beans
And don’t miss my Soup Stews and Chile Category, you’ll find lots of slurp worthy recipes. And if you’re a bean soup fanatic, don’t miss my recipe for Bean Soup Spices. It’s a great blend for 15 Bean Soup and beyond.
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Great Northern Bean Soup with Bacon
Ingredients
- 1 pound Dried Great Northern Beans rinsed and sorted
- 7 cups chicken stock divided
- 1 ¼ pounds thick-sliced bacon cut crosswise into ¼-inch strips
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 sweet onion finely chopped
- 2 large carrot rough chopped
- 3 celery ribs rough chopped
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 teaspoons chopped thyme or 1 teaspoon dried
- 2 teaspoons chopped rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
Instructions
- Wash beans and pick out any misfits. Place beans in a crock pot and cover with 3 cups of chicken stock. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or until tender. Check crock pot periodically to make sure beans don’t go dry. Add more stock if necessary.
- In a large soup pot, cook the bacon over moderate heat, stirring, until browned and crisp, about 7 minutes. Drain, reserving the fat and bacon separately.
- Heat the olive oil in the soup pot. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened, about 8 minutes.
- Stir in the garlic, bay leaf, thyme and rosemary and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the beans and any liquid left in the crockpot. Add remaining stock and 3 tablespoons of the reserved bacon fat and bring to a boil.
- Simmer the soup over low heat until the flavors have married. About 30 minutes.
- Discard the bay leaf and season the soup with salt and pepper and transfer to shallow bowls.
- Garnish the soup with the bacon and serve.
Nutrition
Great Northern Bean Soup with Bacon and Herbs …It’s What’s For Dinner
Why Trust These Recipes? Lea Ann Brown has lived, worked and played in Colorado for 45 years. She has immersed herself in the Colorado Culinary space, is a Culinary School Graduate and publishes her Colorado food Blog, Cooking On The Ranch.
The best white bean soup I’ve tasted. Will try more of your recipes, hope they are as good as the soup.
My husband and I both agree this is the best white bean soup we’ve tried.
Hi Lee Ann
I live in Morrison, Colorado and I also love St. Elmo. I have about 10 scrapbooks of photos from the area, it is so beautiful in the fall. Have you ever stayed at the Love Ranch (owned by other people now)? Anyway you should try your bean soup with the jalapeño smoked bacon from King Soopers. Also if you use Ham Beens would you use the flavor packet along with the spices listed in the recipe?
Thanks for the great recipes
Katherine
Your bean soup looks so good! I haven’t made one yet this fall so good to have another great recipe. Love the bacon in this one 🙂 Gorgeous photo of the Aspen trees!
Thanks so much Susan. This is one of our very favorites.
This looks absolutely delicious and I will definitely put it on my list for the coming winter.
ButI think there’s an error in your ingredient list tough. It says:
1 pound Dried Great Northern Beans rinsed and sorted
and then further down the list (second to last ingredient)….. 1 cup white beans dried
I personally would use great northen but now I am wondering on the quantity…
Thank you
Thank you so much for your email. I have no idea how that “cup” of beans got into the ingredient list – unless at one point I scaled it down dramatically for a smaller batch.
I so appreciate you letting me know. It’s been corrected.
Let me know if you make it. Love hearing from readers.
I’ll be giving this a try over the weekend… thank you so much for the recipe and for the corrected version.
I might go the faster route tough as I have home canned cannellini beans…and a bad cold. I’m sure we’ll love it.
Have a wonderful day 😉
You’re so welcome Louise. Let me know how you like it.
On the Great Northern Bean with bacon soup recipe you have in the ingredients: l pound of beans at the beginning of the recipe, then towards the end, you state l cup of dried beans. It never mentions what to do with these latter beans. Am I missing something–obviously, this blog is from years ago, yet no one mentions this disparity. Did I read this wrong?
That looks so hearty! Would be great with some croutons or garlic bread.
Nothing wrong with cooking so late 🙂 I’m sauteing mushrooms and boiling some potatoes for tomorrow (and it’s almost 10)
Thanks for stopping by my blog! Yum…garlic bread would be perfect.
That soup looks delicious. The broth sounds perfect – and with bacon, rosemary and thyme . . . mmmm. I’m in California visiting my daughter sans cookbooks, so I may try that recipe this week. She loves a good bean soup. I just got my immersion blender last week because I saw them on sale and have been wanting one forever for some of my soup recipes. It will so beat using the potato masher or worse, straining and pureeing in the food processor. Some recipes just have to be creamy! Tasty post!
P.S. I just found out that if you abbreviate wordpress as worpress you link to a much different site. Oops. 🙂
All right, here’s my hot kick for when it’s cold…not soup, I’ll leave that to normal people.
Throw about 15 ripe tomatillos in boiling water w/ sea salt. They’re done when the first one tries to split open. Then toss them into a processor with serrano peppers (the canned ones actually have the right flavor vs. fresh ones being just plain hot, use a whole small can) and a handful of finely chopped sweet onion and only a smidge of garlic. Secret ingredient, two pinches of white sugar that you don’t tell anyone about. Whir it all up in the processor and grab some chips. Game on.
The nice thing is, since the tomas are boiled, it’s a way hot dip. Num. Right when it’s freshly made is best for a cool fall day.
uh oh. I think I just party-fouled. I just stuck a recipe on someone else’s food page. Major infraction.
Sorry to hear that you’re still suffering after that bizarre flying man incident. I’m the same as you with soup. Winter is soup season most definitely and this looks just the ticket-restorative and tasty! 🙂
Thanks NQN – just wait, I’ll be pulling out the big gun soup recipes soon.
Your soup sounds delicious! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thanks for the visit to my blog.
This looks delish! I love making soup when it cold out, too. I look forward to your soup posts, cause I’m always on the lookout for new recipes :). Keep em coming!
I love white bean soup – the bacon is an excellent touch.
You should submit your soups to Deb at Kahakai Kitchen, she runs a Souper Sunday group. http://kahakaikitchen.blogspot.com/2009/01/souper-sundays-details-and-guidelines.html
Thanks for the website – I’ll take a look.
I’m always looking for a good, hearty soup recipe and this looks like the one I’ve been looking for. 🙂 Yum!
I’m surprised it’s not snowing where I am, but I don’t think I’m as high up as you (3500ft). It’s close though! We’re getting a cold, miserable downpour right now – great soup weather!
Denver is at 5,280 and Highlands Ranch where I live, 30 miles south, is something like 6800 ft. It’s actually a beautiful day here today.
Great looking soup and it’s the perfect time of the year. You would cringe when I make soup, I’ve even been known to use an immersion blender for some of my soups. But I’d eat this one just as is. Of course, you can’t go wrong with bacon!
I need to put Immersion Blender on my Christmas List, I’ve wanted one for years. And when I get one – WATCH OUT! 🙂
We love soups too! Yours looked excellent! Most of my soups are so full of stuff, they look more like stew sometimes… I think you do the same!
Thanks BD. That’s right, soups beg for “lots of stuff” 🙂
Wasn’t quite freezing here this morning, but dipped into the high 30’s, so just the idea of soup warmed me up. I am smoking brisket today, so the idea of a hot bowl of soup when I came in from lighting the coals (at 7 AM, 38 degrees) sounds really appealing. I may have to start cooking soups same day I have a long smoking session (a little cold won’t stop the thrill of the grill).
Thanks for this idea
Can’t wait to hear about the brisket. Sounds like an all day event?