Pressure Cooker Tuscan Bean Soup

Instant Pot Tuscan Bean Soup. A hearty vegetarian soup from the heart of Italy, by way of my pressure cooker, with dry cannellini beans and lots of vegetables. Looking for a stick-to-your-ribs soup? Try Tuscan beans.

Jump to:

• INGREDIENTS
• How to make Instant Pot Tuscan Bean Soup
• Substitutions
• Equipment
• Scaling
• Soaking dry cannellini beans?
• Sorting Beans
• What to serve with Tuscan Bean Soup
• Storing leftovers
• Instant Pot Tuscan Bean Soup Recipe
• Related Posts
• 💬 Comments

Tuscan Bean soup was one of the first times I thought, “you know, with enough beans, I could probably be a vegetarian.” (Or, at least it was one of the first vegetarian recipes that didn’t leave me saying “that was good. But I’m still hungry - can we stop on the way home and get something to eat?”)

This is also the recipe that introduced me to kale, back before kale was cool. I know kale is overdone - it has gone from “cool new healthy ingredient” to “New Yorker piece complaining about hipsters and their kale” in the space of a couple of years. That’s OK, because kale is in this recipe for old school reasons. This soup gets Tuscany through Italian winters. It’s a collection of odds and ends - dried beans, root vegetables, a Parmesan rind tossed in the pot to add flavor - and kale, a winter crop that loves growing in the snow. 

INGREDIENTS

Soaked beans

• 1 pound dried cannellini beans, sorted and rinsed
• 1 tablespoon fine sea salt (or table salt)
• 2 quarts water

Tuscan Bean Soup ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 large carrots, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
• ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 6 cups water
• 1 (14- to 16-ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 1 parmesan rind (optional - roughly 3 inches by 1 ½ inches)
• 1 (2-inch long) sprig fresh rosemary
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme
• 4 ounces kale, stems removed, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 teaspoons fine sea salt
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
• Grated parmesan for garnish
• Minced parsley for garnish

How to make Instant Pot Tuscan Bean Soup

Soak the beans overnight

Sort the cannellini beans, removing broken beans, stones, and dirt clods. Rinse the beans, put them in a large container with the fine sea salt, and cover with 2 quarts water. Let the beans soak for at least 8 hours, or overnight. Drain and rinse the beans.

OR: Quick Pressure soak for 30 minutes

Sort the cannellini beans, removing broken beans, stones, and dirt clods. Rinse the beans, put them in an Instant Pot or other pressure cooker, sprinkle with the fine sea salt, and cover with 2 quarts water. Lock the lid and pressure cook for 1 minute at high pressure. (In an Instant Pot, use Manual, Pressure Cook, or Custom mode.) Let the pressure come down naturally for 30 minutes, then drain and rinse the beans. Wipe out the pot before using it in the next step.

Sauté the aromatics

Add the oil to an Instant Pot set to sauté mode - high. (Or other pressure cooker over medium-high heat.) Heat the oil until it starts shimmering, about 3 minutes. Add the onion, carrots, and garlic, and sprinkle with the ½ teaspoon salt and the red pepper flakes. Sauté until the onions are softened, about 5 minutes.

Everything in the pot

Add the drained cannellini beans to the pressure cooker and stir them to mix with the aromatics. Stir in the water and diced tomatoes. Add the parmesan rind, rosemary, and thyme sprigs.

Pressure cook the soup for 15 minutes

Lock the lid and pressure cook for 15 minutes at high pressure in an Instant Pot or other electric PC, or for 12 minutes in a stovetop PC. (In an Instant Pot, use Manual, Pressure Cook, or Custom mode.)
After pressure cooking, let the pressure come down naturally, about 20 minutes. (If you're in a hurry, you can quick release any remaining pressure after 15 minutes.) Remove the lid carefully, opening away from you - even when it’s not under pressure, the steam in the cooker is very hot.

Simmer the kale, then serve

Fish out the parmesan rind and discard. Turn the heat under the pressure cooker to medium-high (sauté mode on an electric PC) and stir in the kale. Simmer, uncovered, until the kale is tender, about 3 minutes. Stir the salt, fresh ground black pepper and balsamic vinegar into the pot. Serve, sprinkling each bowl of soup with fresh grated parmesan and minced parsley. Enjoy!

Substitutions

• Other beans: Cannellini beans are the traditional Tuscan white bean, but if you can’t find them, great northern beans make a good substitute (and cook in the same amount of time), or navy beans (which, after soaking, only take 12 minutes in an Instant Pot or other electric PC, or 10 minutes in a stovetop PC).
• Vegan: If you want to cook vegan, leave out the parmesan cheese.
• Not vegetarian: If you want to go carnivore, add 4 ounces of diced pancetta with the onion and carrots. (The smoked pork adds an extra layer of flavor to the beans.)

Equipment

A 6-quart pressure cooker. (Or larger - this recipe was originally cooked in my 10-quart stovetop pressure cooker, but I switched to full time Instant Pot use years ago.)
Pressure cooker dried beans are one of the reasons I became a pressure cooker convert. Try them - you'll never go back to canned beans. (OK, maybe you will, for convenience - but see the Storage section for tips on make ahead freezer beans.)

Scaling

This recipe scales down easily - cut everything in half if you don't need as many beans, or have a 3-quart pressure cooker. Scaling up runs into space issues; if you have an 8-quart pressure cooker, or larger, you can double this recipe, but it's too much to fit in a 6-quart pressure cooker.

Soaking dry cannellini beans?

I get the "to soak, or not to soak?" question all the the time. I soak my cannellini beans, because they cook more evenly.
If you forget to soak the cannellini beans, sort and rinse them, then change the pressure cooking time to 35 minutes at high pressure. After the natural pressure release, check the beans; if they are not cooked through, lock the lid and pressure cook them for another 5 minutes.

Sorting Beans

Beans are an agricultural product, and stuff tends to creep in when they are processed. Beans should always be sorted and rinsed before using, to get rid of any twigs, stones, clumps of dirt, or broken beans.
To sort the beans, I pour them out on one side of a rimmed baking sheet (a half-sheet pan), to keep the beans from escaping. Then I slowly run my fingers through the pile of beans, pulling them towards me on the sheet. I watch the beans as they move, looking for anything that doesn't seem right. If I see something, I poke around in the beans until I find what caught my eye, and discard it. I repeat this a couple of times, until I'm satisfied everything is out of the beans.
Then I dump the beans into a fine mesh strainer and rinse them under cold running water, to wash off any dirt or dust still on the beans.

What to serve with Tuscan Bean Soup

This soup is heavy enough to be its own main course, served with a salad and a loaf of bread.

Storing leftovers

Tuscan bean soup makes great leftovers. It can be refrigerated for a few days and reheated, or frozen for a few months. I freeze the soup in 2-cup containers (or Ball jars) so I have single servings of soup ready when I need them. All it takes is about 6 minutes in the microwave to heat them through.

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What do you think?

Questions? Other ideas? Leave them in the comments section below.

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