"Wayne Boatwright" > wrote in message
...

> Years ago I tried one of these packages, not this brand and probably not
> 15
> beans, maybe 10 or 12. As I recall, it made a good soup, but nothing out
> of the ordinary. I have since made multi-bean and grain soups, but it was
> my own combination, adding beans, peas, and grains from individual
> packages. I liked the results. It's also easier to control the different
> cooking rates of the ingredients, adding quicker cooking items like
> lentils, peas, barley, etc., later in the process. I almost always cook
> bean soups with a ham bone or ham stock and sometimes add sausage. I
> don't
> like "brothy" soups, so will deliberately allow some quicker cooking
> varieties to cook to mushiness to thicken the soup.
> --
> Wayne Boatwright *¿*

Now that you mention it, Wayne, I have a bean recipe that recommends
pureeing some of the cooked beans and pitching them back in the pot to
thicken the finished dish.

And a ham bone always helps. In my starving days in Greenwich Village I used
to pop into the kitchen of the neighborhood pub and beg for their ham bones
(they made a mean ham sammich) for my weekly pot of pea soup.

Felice