The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

mixing the ingredients together, bringing the soup to
a boil, and serving it immediately. There’s no fault in
doing that—canned beans, after all, are a
convenience food. But what if I told you that by
adding a ton of flavorful aromatic ingredients and a
quick (15-minute) simmer, you could amplify the
quality of your soup by an order of magnitude?*
OK, no dramatic drumroll there, I guess. Let’s be
honest: these are 30-minute bean soups. They aren’t
going to change your life the way, say, buying your
best friend a lottery ticket that happens to be worth
millions of dollars would, but they may well change
your weeknight cooking routine.