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Healthy Home Economist / Archives / Recipes / Stock, Broth & Soups / Soup Recipes / Soup Recipes For Dinner / Traditional Spanish Bean Soup

Traditional Spanish Bean Soup

by Sarah Pope / Affiliate Links ✔

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Traditional recipe for Spanish bean soup with a base of soaked legumes, vegetables, and meat stock perfectly blended with chopped chorizo.

Spanish bean soup in a bowl with wooden spoons

A local hotspot in my hometown to enjoy traditional food is the Tampa Bay History Center.

The museum cafe is a mini version of the hugely famous Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City.

Ybor City is the historical Spanish neighborhood just north of downtown Tampa that is home to many shops and restaurants along with at least one remaining cigar factory.

It’s also where I shop every week at an urban farm to obtain locally-grown, seasonal produce.

The recipe below for Spanish bean soup on the cafe placemats immediately caught my eye while enjoying a quick lunch on a family outing.

Everything about it was traditional from soaking the beans overnight to using beef and ham bones to make the soup broth. Alternatively, you can use meat stock as the base.

Even lard is used to fry the onion and bacon!

I thought I would share this recipe with you as it is simple and fast to make and one of the most delicious blends of meats, beans, and broth you will ever try.

If you live in Tampa or will be visiting soon, go and check this place out! 

If you are in a hurry, it doesn’t seem that you need to gain entrance to the museum itself to sit down and enjoy a quick lunch.

spanish bean soup in a bowl
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Traditional Spanish Bean Soup Recipe

Traditional recipe for Spanish bean soup that nourishes with properly prepared legumes, vegetables, and a meat stock base blended with chopped chorizo.

Course Main Course
Cuisine Spanish
Keyword gluten free, healthy, nourishing, traditional
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Soak Time 8 hours
Total Time 9 hours 5 minutes
Servings 8
Calories 361 kcal
Author Sarah Pope

Ingredients

  • 1 cup dried chickpeas
  • filtered water
  • 1 pound potatoes preferably organic
  • 4 ounces bacon preferably grassfed
  • 4 links chorizo Spanish sausage
  • 1 onion chopped
  • 1 beef bone
  • 1 ham bone
  • 2 Tbsp lard preferably pastured
  • 1 pinch saffron
  • 1 Tbsp sea salt

Instructions

  1. Soak dried chickpeas overnight in a large bowl or pot with a tablespoon of sea salt dissolved in sufficient filtered water to cover. Use 2 cups of these presoaked chickpeas if preferred.

  2. Drain the water from the chickpeas and rinse in clean filtered water. Place chickpeas and bones in a large pot with 2 quarts of fresh, filtered water (or meat stock if omitting the bones). Bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer for 45 minutes on low heat.

  3. Immediately after starting to cook the chickpeas, fry the bacon and onion in lard until the onion is caramelized. Add the bacon, onion, potatoes, and saffron to the pot with the simmering beans and bones.

  4. When the potatoes are soft, remove the pot of soup from the heat and add chorizo cut into 1/2-inch thick medallions.

  5. Remove the bones from the soup, add sea salt to taste, and serve at the table with an optional dollop of homemade creme fraiche.

Recipe Notes

Substitute lentils for the chickpeas for a GAPS diet friendly version.

 

Nutrition Facts
Traditional Spanish Bean Soup Recipe
Amount Per Serving (1 cup)
Calories 361 Calories from Fat 189
% Daily Value*
Fat 21g32%
Saturated Fat 9g45%
Polyunsaturated Fat 2g
Monounsaturated Fat 10g
Cholesterol 56mg19%
Potassium 564mg16%
Carbohydrates 26g9%
Fiber 5g20%
Protein 17g34%
Vitamin C 5mg6%
Calcium 43mg4%
Iron 5mg28%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
Spanish bean soup in white bowl on table
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Category: Dairy Free Recipes, Gluten Free Recipes, Legume Recipes, Pork Recipes, Soup Recipes For Dinner
Sarah Pope

Sarah Pope MGA has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. She is a summa cum laude graduate in Economics from Furman University and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of three books: Amazon #1 bestseller Get Your Fats Straight, Traditional Remedies for Modern Families, and Living Green in an Artificial World.

Her four eBooks Good Diet…Bad Diet, Real Food Fermentation, Ketonomics, and Ancestrally Inspired Dairy-Free Recipes are available for complimentary download via Healthy Home Plus.

Her mission is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.

Sarah was awarded Activist of the Year in 2010 at the International Wise Traditions Conference, subsequently serving on the Board of Directors of the nutrition nonprofit the Weston A. Price Foundation for seven years.

Her work has been covered by numerous independent and major media including USA Today, ABC, and NBC among many others.

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Reader Interactions

Comments (29)

  1. Lillemor

    Mar 24, 2012 at 12:17 pm

    We visited the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC last year, and the cafe is amazing! The cafe features indigenous food from the Western Hemisphere and reflects the food and cooking techniques from each region. There are cooking stations for each region and the ingredients change with each season. I had cedar plank roasted salmon, a wild rice salad, and some other salad with fiddlehead ferns. Quite a difference from most of the other Wash DC museums that serve mostly McDonalds. Here is a link to the cafe menus: http://www.mitsitamcafe.com/content/menus.asp. They sell a cookbook too!

    Reply
    • Girl With Curl

      Mar 24, 2012 at 3:33 pm

      This sounds great. I hope I can visit this museum!

    • Mikki

      Mar 24, 2012 at 7:09 pm

      WOW!

  2. Nichole

    Mar 24, 2012 at 11:40 am

    So cool to find real food anywhere! It amazes me that people think that healthy food comes out of boxes. Heaven forbid that you actually cook something or eat a vegetable or fruit or even worse some good fat!

    Reply
  3. Katie

    Mar 24, 2012 at 11:21 am

    Our Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, TX has wonderful food!

    http://www.thecafemodern.com/menus.html

    Reply
  4. Sally

    Mar 24, 2012 at 11:00 am

    The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland Oregon has pretty decent food in their cafe as well. It is run by Bon Appetit http://www.bamco.com/ and the food is fresh, sustainable and humanly treated and sustainable. I was so surprised because i would never eat there before. At sometime they made a switch! Must be a new trend for Museums! And for real food, it was affordable. Do you ever notice with real food you can eat less and still be satisfied? I don’t think it costs more to eat healthy at all! Our local New Seasons Market dining area is the same. Too bad it’s only in Oregon!

    Reply
    • Mikki

      Mar 24, 2012 at 7:09 pm

      The food all over Portland is good, at least what we had. We had lunch not at this one, but the art museum, pubs and a fabulous Jewish Deli. Another cool thing in Portland, Happy Hour is not what we thought. The drinks are still full price, but all the food was half price or more, and all very real and good. We made that our dinner, just kept ordering. Loved my American/Jewish breakfast plate: two eggs over easy, thinly sliced pastrami, potato latkes and rye toast. What a great breakfast!

  5. Mikki

    Mar 24, 2012 at 10:20 am

    That recipe sounds wonderful Sarah! Our small museum in Santa Barbara, the art one, has a wonderful cafe with lots of real food. We usually have a pretty good wholesome meal when we visit these art museums. I recall one in Portland Oregon with very good real food and the one in Palm Springs too. Hmmm, must be something going on here. 😉

    Reply
    • Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist

      Mar 24, 2012 at 5:13 pm

      It does make sense that creative, right brained folks from the art world would lead the trend back to real food and eschew the fake stuff. Great to know this is happening all over.

    • Mikki

      Mar 24, 2012 at 7:03 pm

      When we travel, we are usually hitting museums, and have found the food very good. Now I will be looking to see just how real the food all is. I do know one thing, it beats the heck outta Applebee’s or Burger King! 😉

    • Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist

      Mar 24, 2012 at 7:10 pm

      True .. just because it looks real doesn’t mean it is. You have to look at the recipe and ask the chef typically to get the real story.

  6. Jackie

    Mar 23, 2012 at 6:34 pm

    thats awesome! there is nothing like that around here… everyone around here is supporting Chick Fil Barf… I know its going to make so many people around here sick. Oh for something like your place in this area!

    Reply
    • Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist

      Mar 24, 2012 at 9:05 am

      Most people don’t even know what good food tastes like anymore. Sad.

    • Stanley Fishman

      Mar 24, 2012 at 11:54 am

      Sarah, that is so true. And so sad.

  7. Ariel

    Mar 23, 2012 at 6:14 pm

    Yummy! I love Spanish food. I’ll have to try this.

    Reply
  8. Andi

    Mar 23, 2012 at 5:37 pm

    St. Petersburg’s Museum of Fine Art has an awesome cafe (MFA Cafe) with delicious real food too 🙂

    Reply
  9. Becky Gutcher Hyatt via Facebook

    Mar 23, 2012 at 5:05 pm

    i second this recommendation – i ate there last summer.. MMMMMMMMMMM

    Reply
  10. Susan C. Wheeler via Facebook

    Mar 23, 2012 at 5:03 pm

    I shall have to remember that. My family lives near Tampa and I grew up near there and visit at least once a year. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
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