Navy Bean

Stable enough to last days in the fridge (and hearty enough to sate a breastfeeding mom).

Plump white beans create a luscious broth combined with lemon zest, onion, garlic, and celery. A stealthy knob of butter adds just enough richness.

This rustic French soup is perfect cold weather comfort food—best made a day in advance and reheated to serve.

Spring (as in asparagus, white beans, and tons of herb and lemons) in a skillet—with tender swordfish to make it a satisfying meal.

A lemony, herby bean salad with lots of crunch from sliced snap peas is good. But when it's piled on top of garlic-rubbed, ricotta-spread toast, it's even better.

This soup is inspired by Ash Reshteh, a thick Iranian soup made with chickpeas, a boatload of herbs, and noodles, with one big exception: We omitted the noodles.

Coating the herbs in oil and soaking the shallot in vinegar prevents oxidation, so you can keep these beans for days.

This recipe doesn't make sticky-sweet brown sugar baked beans. Think of them like the top crust of a good cassoulet.

To prevent the pasta from getting too soft, we cook it separately and toss it with olive oil and chopped parsley, then spoon it into each bowl of soup.

Instead of using canned tuna, this recipe puts you in control of the quality of the tuna and how long to cook it. We like it on the medium-rare side.

Keep a resealable bag of leftover Parmesan rinds in the freezer for recipes like this; they add great depth to tomato sauces and vegetable-centric soups, too.

You've got plenty of options for this salad: butter beans, lima beans, black-eyed peas, or navy beans. Just be sure to use green beans for some color.

This bean pie, which relies largely on pantry ingredients, has a lovely custard filling consisting of drained canned navy beans that are processed until smooth.

This summer soup is deeply savory, with anchovies, bacon, and a brown butter–tomato sauce anchoring the whole thing. 

Pleasantly bitter escarole adds balance to a rich vegetarian stew brightened with feta cheese and green Castelvetrano olives.

Chewy nubbin of farro give special appeal to a hearty Mediterranean vegetable-bean soup that's loaded with calcium-rich kale. If you don't have time to cook the beans from scratch, check out the Express Farro and Chickpea Soup variation.

A specialty of the southwest of France, cassoulet—named for cassole, the oval earthenware dish in which it was made—is a rich, slow-cooked bean stew made with white beans, meats (most often pork and sausages), and duck or goose confit. The dish is time consuming—it can take an entire day from start to finish—but is manageable when you break it into three tasks, which can be spaced out over a few days. The first step is to prepare Duck Confit (see page 232). Next the beans (which have to be soaked overnight) are cooked on the stove. Then the confit and beans are layered in a pot, along with pork and sausage, and baked for about three hours.

No potluck meal or barbecue is complete without baked beans. These cook for a long time but need very little attention. The result is well worth the wait.