If you’re still going strong with your New Years resolutions to eat better and healthier, we want to leave you with one last nourishing and tasty recipe for now. In the past two weeks we’ve showed you a roasted sweet potato dish and two vegetable soup recipes, and now we want to feature a veggie-based stew. Like these last few recipes, this one is simple to make and packed with great whole ingredients that’ll make you feel good about downing a bowl or two of this warm stew. As an added bonus, you can also make this vegan by just leaving out one ingredient. We crafted our stew from a recipe in the New York Times but added our own spin to it, based on our tastes and what was available in our local grocery store, and we think you’ll love what we came up with.
You’ll need:
- One bunch of kale
- Olive oil
- Garlic
- An onion
- Tomato paste
- Red pepper flakes
- A 15-ounce can of chickpeas
- A 15-ounce can of cannellini beans
- A 15-ounce can of small white beans
- A 1-quart container of vegetable stock
- A lemon
- Feta cheese (leave this out for a vegan stew)
- Cilantro
You can start first by emptying all three of your cans of beans into a colander to let them drain, and rinse them and set them aside.
Then slice your onion and 4 cloves of garlic and place them in a stock pot with 1/4 cup of olive oil. Cook until they just start to brown, for around 5 minutes, then stir in 3 tablespoons of tomato paste and a sprinkling of red pepper flakes. After about 2 minutes everything will be a nice dark red color and you can add in the beans.
Pour all your broth into the pot. Tear the leaves from your bunch of kale into bite-sized pieces, set those aside, and place the remaining stems into the stew. Bring all of this to a boil and let it simmer for 15-20 minutes, then add in the kale leaves and stir just until they wilt.
Mix in the juice from your lemon, then dish out the stew into individual bowls and serve topped with cilantro leaves and (if you’re using it) crumbled feta.
And that’s all there is to it! For a minimal amount of prep work – just a little slicing and tearing and draining – you get a great, hot bowl of vegetable stew. The broth is nicely flavored with the kale stems and just a little bit spicy, the kale leaves add some greens, and the stew’s heartiness comes from all the protein-rich beans. With some cool feta on top, this is a really complex and tasty meal that fills you up in a healthy way. We made this on New Year’s Day as a lazy meal, and we thought it was an excellent way to kick off a new decade.