I start a lot of my vegetable soups with a ritualistic soaking of beans. The beans I favor these days are cannellini because they make soups creamier and they’re a nutritional powerhouse. I sometimes soak more than I need and freeze a portion of them to add to soups at a later time. And I’ll admit that there are a few times where I have to grab a can of beans.

Give me a moment to fan girl all the great things about cannellini beans, because I’m a huge fan. They contain an array of vitamins, including B, E, K, and folate (part of the vitamin B family). Then there’s all the minerals, including potassium, magnesium, and iron. To take full advantage of the iron in these white beans you need to also have vitamin C to aid in absorption, so I usually add tomatoes or a leafy green that has vitamin C. In this case, I added tomato paste to the broth, and the usual array of stock veggies, herbs, and aromatic (garlic). White beans are also rich in phenols, a strong anti-inflammatory, so another win on that front.

To get the beans really creamy, after they’ve soaked for at least 8 hours, I cook them again the Instant Pot. You don’t need an Instant Pot here, you can also cook them on the stovetop in a saucepan. I added a recipe below for making the beans creamier. If you’re cooking the beans for a while in the soup, then the extra cooking time will probably be enough to get the beans creamier.