Fasolada Bean Soup with Fetta Crostinis

Justine’s traditional fasolada brings authentic Greek comfort to your table with this beloved bean soup! This classic fasolada starts with overnight-soaked cannellini beans that slow-cook into creamy perfection with aromatic vegetables. The key to perfect fasolada is patience – Justine shows you how the beans become beautifully tender after hours of gentle simmering. Finished with quality olive oil and bright lemon juice, this fasolada delivers that distinctive Greek flavour that’s both hearty and fresh. Served with crumbled fetta crostini, this fasolada creates a complete meal that’s perfect for cold days when you need serious comfort! Subscribe for more of Justine’s brilliant traditional recipes that bring authentic flavours to your kitchen!

Full Recipe: https://everydaygourmet.tv/recipes/fasolada-bean-soup-with-fetta-crostinis

Ingredients:
500g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight
100ml extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for serving
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
2 tbsp tomato paste
½ tsp dried oregano
1 bay leaf
Juice of ½ lemon
3 sprigs parsley, chopped
Salt & pepper

Fetta Crostini
6 slices of baguette toasted
100g fetta, crumbled
Chilli flakes, optional

Method:
Heat half the oil in a pot and add the onion, carrot, celery and sauté for 5 minutes until it starts to colour.

Drain and rinse the beans under cold water, then drain again. Add to the pot and coat in the vegetables. Add the tomato paste, oregano and bay leaf and cook for a further minute. Add water so it covers the beans by 4 centimetres, about 2 litres. Bring to the boil then cover with a lid and turn down to a low heat. Cook for 1-2 hours or until the beans are soft and creamy.

Once cooked, season generously with salt and a pinch of pepper.

For a creamy soup, add two ladles to a blender and blend until smooth. Return to the beans and stir through.

Add remaining oil and lemon juice.

For the crostini, crumble the fetta over the toasted bread and sprinkle over lemon zest, parsley and chilli.

Serve the soup in shallow bowls and top with the crostini and little extra drizzle of olive oil.

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Soup: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1Cp-Lm2gLTn9pML257flzQf0bdl6OStx

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Many of my Greek friends say that fasulada, which is a bean soup, is Greece’s national dish, not musaka, not sulaki. And I get it because it’s so comforting, so easy to make. Now, let’s start with our beans. This is the most important part. To get the best results, you want to cook the beans from scratch. What I’ve got here are some dried canolini beans. Now, you can use any white bean of your choice. Lemur beans are also traditional and arico beans. I like to soak these overnight in plenty of water. And you can see that they double in size. So these are the dried ones and these have been soaking for 2 days. That’s what we’re after. And this is going to give us a lovely creamy result in our soup. Drain that water off and then we can start cooking. So the base of this soup is the holy trinity which is carrots, onions, and celery. I’m going to add a good gug of extra virgin olive oil. When I say a good gug, so about 1/4 of a cup of extra virgin olive oil in with our onions. [Music] And we’ll start to cook them up. While they’re frying, we’ll add some celery. Two stalks of celery. And we’re just wanting to chop it quite fine. You don’t have to be pedantic though because the soup cooks for quite a while and these vegetables will cook down. So just in big strips like this. And then we’re just going to dice. That’s good enough. In it goes. And I don’t want these vegetables to caramelize. We’re just softening them quite quickly before we add the other ingredients. Okay, time to add our carrots. One carrot. I’ve just cut them into 1 cm pieces. They can go in. Again, another quick stir. Now, there’s two ways of making this soup. You could have a white soup that has no tomato in it, or you can add tomato. I’m going to do the tomato variety, which has a little bit of tomato paste. We want to cook off that tomato paste. So, we’ll add that to our vegetables and just fry that off for a moment, just to get rid of that raw tomatoy acidic flavor. Okay, Greek food is never complete without some oregano. So, a good pinch of dried oregano and a bay leaf. Stir that through. And that’s the basis of our soup. So, we can add our rehydrated beans. So, this is 500 g of white beans. It’s 500 g before they’re rehydrated. They go. And if I’m going to make this soup, I’m going to make a big amount of this soup because it freezes really well. So, we’ll coat all of those rehydrated beans in a lovely tomato and vegetable mixture. No salt at this stage. Whenever you’re cooking dried beans like this, you want to avoid adding salt. If you add salt, the beans will become tough. We want them to be super creamy. So, I’ll season this right at the end. Okay. In with some water. And I’m doing this the very basic classic way. If you like, you could add stock, but I really want to make this all about the beans. It needs to cover the beans by at least 5 to 6 cm. We can always add some more water later. And all we do is bring that up to the boil. I’ll turn it down to a medium heat. Lid on. And this is going to cook for about 1 to 2 hours or until those beans are creamy. [Music] M. This soup smells fantastic. Let’s have a look at it. And what I like to do is take out that bay leaf. It’s done its job. And just have a look at the consistency. This is what we’re after. A really hearty soup. Now, I’m going to serve this with a feta toast. So, I’ve just been grilling some bread. A little olive oil on each side. We’ll turn it over. Just give it another minute. Now, the one thing we haven’t done yet is added some salt. So, this is the perfect time to add the salt. A good pinch of salt. You can see this is a big batch of soup. It’s going to feed at least six people. And you can serve the soup as is, but if you want it to be extra creamy, I suggest giving it a blend. So, just using a stick blender three or four times. Not to blend the whole soup, but just a little bit of it. So, we’ve got chunky textures and then smoothness. Fantastic. That’s all you need to do. And I’ll give it another stir. And that is just right. Now, because this is so creamy, I just need a little bit of acidity. So, I’m going to add some lemon juice. Just a little squeeze. Okay, before we serve that up in a bowl, let’s finish off these gorgeous crustinis, which I believe take this soup to the next level. Really make it quite delicious. hot hot toast. And what I’m going to put on this is some feta. This feta is creamy and crumbly. Exactly what you want for a toast like this. And we’ll just crumble this feta over the top of the hot toast. I mean, what’s a Greek dish without olive oil, lemon, and feta? And this feta is just lovely salty, slightly tangy, which is what you want with a creamy soup just like this. To finish this off, I’m going to add a few flavors that go so nicely with feta. So, lemon zest. Little lemon zest over each. And I love the addition of some chili flakes. So, a little bit of chili over the top. And some fresh parsley. So, I’ll grab my knife. Just a few little sprigs, which I always have on standby because it just really elevates any type of dish and fresh herbs like this. And all you need is a few sprigs. Finely slice. And then we’ll sprinkle that over our feta. The last little thing that I like to do is add a drizzle of oil for these crustinis. Now, these crustinis are delicious as is, but serve that with the soup, well, it’s just even better. All right, let’s plate up the soup. [Applause] We’ll grab our bowl. Give that one last stir. A generous spoonful. This is certainly not a soup that you have as an entree. It’s a hearty mane onto the plate. Some freshly cracked pepper over the top and our crustinis. I love these humble traditional soups that never go out of fashion. And I’ve made it slightly modern with that feta crustini. This one here. Well, I better have a taste of it. That’s delicious. A little taste of the soup. The taste of grease. [Music]