18 Delicious Recipes with Dried Beans

When I was a kid, my family lived in Miami had a Cuban neighbor: Mrs. Garcia. I don’t know where she is now, but she gave my mother her recipe for black bean soup, which I still use to this day. It has ruined me for all other black bean soups — nothing I’ve had in Cuban restaurants has ever matched up to this.

Here’s the story of one of those soups: a white bean and bacon bowl, powered up by ham hock and red pepper, and with a little bit of everything that makes a soup good: creamy, brothy, chunky, rich with savory white beans and ham. It’s the perfect winter soup, all in one pot.

This slow cooker recipe makes you fall in love with the bean and pasta Italians know best.

The soup is directly inspired by a Persian soup called ash-e reshteh.

This white bean soup makes its own broth with some help from a Parmesan rind as it cooks in the slow cooker. It’s an easy dish for a busy weekday and manages to be satisfying without being too heavy or rich.

This Spanish bean soup is not just any soup. Rather, it is a soup sent straight from the soup gods.

This soup is one of those magical recipes with just a few ingredients, and all the usual suspects — carrot, onion, beans, chicken broth — that nevertheless turns out to have such a deep, wonderful flavor you don’t mind that it makes enough to feed you for a week. And a Dutch oven is really the best vessel for it, because this soup is cooked just a little differently.

Originally an ingenious, low-maintenance way to feed a house on pre-machine laundry day, “red beans and rice” worked its way into classic status through the region’s home, restaurant, and lunchroom menus.

Dried field peas can be had for a song, keep indefinitely on the pantry shelf, and need only a little attention to get them started on the road to a satisfying low-and-slow meal. Add the fact that its flavor deepens overnight, and you have every reason to put this dish into your repertoire.

Borlotti beans are also known as cranberry beans. In some places you can find these fresh, still in their mottled magenta pods. They are beautiful, cheap, and worth buying.

If using canned beans omit the chickpea liquid and use 4 cups of chicken stock or broth.

Can make two days ahead. Store in refrigerator. Freeze leftovers.

A family recipe is important, even if we don’t remember all the parts, because each attempt at its re-creation keeps us connected to the people who helped shape us. It happens each time we do that intimate, life-sustaining cooking and eating thing, especially when we do it from a place of memory.