Bean and Mushroom Soup

I still have lots of marinade left over from the portobello sandwiches and the marinated chicken, so I decided to take Isa's (from the PPK) advice and add it to a stew. I love bean soups; they are easy, versatile, and cheap. Normally when I make bean soup I toss in whatever I have on hand and play with the spices, so every batch of soup is a little different. To make things a bit more complicated, I never write down what I do for ingredients, so if a batch is super good I have no way to easily recreate it. This time I decided to live life on the wild side and actually wrote down what I tossed into the ol' crock pot!

The soup was really good, the marinade added a nice savory flavor and it reminded me of a beef stew (but without the meat!). The marinade added so much flavor I didn't have to add any spices, just a little bit of pepper and salt. I sliced up the mushroom stems from the portobello sandwiches and added them to the soup and they added a nice texture. It would probably be even better with sliced mushroom caps instead of stems, but that was all I had.

Just for my own curiosity, I decided to measure the water I added when the beans were soaking and measure it again in the morning to see how much they absorbed. The 2 cups of dried beans absorbed 2 cups of water, so I'm guessing you could just increase the water in the soup by 2 cups if you don't want to soak the beans overnight.

Bean and Mushroom Soup (inspired by PPK)

2 cups dried mixed beans
3 cups vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 cup “Perfect Grilled Portobellos” marinade from Veganomicon/The PPK
1 large carrot, chopped
2 ribs celery, sliced
1 ½ cups chopped kale or escarole
1 small onion, chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
1 ¼ cups mushrooms (I used the stems of the portobellos)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Soak beans overnight it warm water. In the morning, rinse beans thoroughly and add to crock pot. Add all ingredients except salt and cook on high for 4-6 hours or low for 8-10 hours (I usually cook on high for about 4-5 hours then switch the crock pot to low until dinner time). When beans are cooked, add salt, if desired. Note: If you forget to soak your beans, add an extra 2 cups hot water to the crock pot and cook on high for 8-10 hours.

Add some gluten-free drop biscuits (or regular if you aren't gf) and dinner is served!