Bland bean soup

[cjsmith]

Bean soup: onion, celery, a lot of great northern beans, parsley, *some* kind of meat for flavor.

If the meat used is salt pork, the soup turns out to have absolutely no flavor whatsoever. Seriously, this is the blandest thing I've tasted in a long time.

I'm sure some herbs and spices could save this. Beyond the obvious cracked black pepper, what would you add?

Comments

[kent4str.livejournal.com]

Whole cumin seed. But then I'm a little strange when it comes to spices...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I like cumin. Why whole? My instinct would be to think first of ground, considering this soup has already been through all the cooking it's likely to get.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

whole cumin seed, take that and toss into a small amount of damn near smoking hot oil.

let the flavor blossom into the oil. will take about half a minute. turn the heat off and remove oil pan from the heat. pour this infused oil and spice into your soup.

learnt that from an Indian friend as a way to extract and mobilise spice flavors. They called it bhunao. Bhunao refers t the method and can be done with any spice.

[kent4str.livejournal.com]

Ah - I'd missed the "done with cooking" part. You're right, then, whole wouldn't work, but I prefer the flavor of whole if you're going to be cooking it a while.

And
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Ah - I'd missed the "done with cooking" part. You're right, then, whole wouldn't work, but I prefer the flavor of whole if you're going to be cooking it a while.

And
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Ah - I'd missed the "done with cooking" part. You're right, then, whole wouldn't work, but I prefer the flavor of whole if you're going to be cooking it a while.

And <ljuser="inflectionpoint">'s method sound interesting. I'll have to try that.

Also consider smoked paprika, hot or not to your taste.