Soup Beans Are A Beloved Appalachian Staple

For people raised in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, no meal is more comforting and satisfying, or less expensive and fussy, than a big pot of pintos cooked in the style known as soup beans.

Soup beans are not soup, but these slowly simmered beans are soupy, bathed in a rich, creamy, nutritious pot likker (or "pot liquor") that's inseparable from the beans themselves, sometimes literally.

Each time you reheat soup beans, the beans get creamier, and their liquid gets thicker and more delicious. This tolerance for reheating is part of their appeal. Even when freshly cooked, soup beans can look drab, but their looks have nothing to do with their beauty. Here's what you need to know about soup beans and its ingredients.

The Importance Of Pinto Beans

A bean soup can use any small dried bean, but when a mountain person says they want soup beans, they mean pintos.

The Appalachian Mountains are home to dozens of varieties of nutrient-packed beans, including many that seed savers now categorize as heirlooms. Starting with Native Americans, every generation that cultivated the mountain land knew that specific beans could flourish there.

There is a richer lode of genetic diversity among beans in Appalachia than anywhere else in the world, yet pintos don't grow there. Pinto beans becoming the primary ingredient in this dish is a long and curious story with no clear-cut answers. Still, a bag of dried pinto beans was perhaps the least expensive protein available in almost any store that carried groceries.

The dried beans lasted for months, and the cooked ones lasted for days. The lack of a clear path to the Appalachian table is a minor detail because the essential part of the story of soup beans is that they hold sway in Appalachian foodways.

What's In Soup Beans?

There's more to soup beans than simply cooking pinto beans, however. Soup beans look nothing like store-bought pinto beans from a can.

Like so many things, soup beans need fat and salt. The fat can come from good oil, but pintos prefer carefully using a little cured pork seasoning—a chunk of side meat, a couple of slices of smoky bacon, or a good spoonful of bacon grease.

Usually, the only other seasonings in the pot are plenty of salt and pepper. Some people shake on hot sauce at the table. There are oral histories from people who, in the absence of seasoning pork, added a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter or yellow mustard to the pot, which is odd but resourceful.

Although few Appalachians will turn down a bowl of beans at almost any meal, soup beans usually are the meal, needing nothing more than good cornbread and maybe a little chowchow, if it's handy. Some people top them with a bit of chopped raw onion or a couple of home-canned tomatoes mashed with a fork. But if we add so much that the pintos get lost, we've lost our way with soup beans.

Soup beans satisfy more than hunger. They fulfill a longing, nostalgia, and a need for the all-too-rare luxury of humble foods prepared perfectly.