Sugar Bean Soup
South Africa
Senior Editor
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Sugar bean soup is a thick South African winter stew, closer to a bean and beef braise than to anything most people would call a soup. Speckled sugar beans, the mottled pink and brown beans that are a staple of South African cooking, are cooked down with bone-in beef chuck and a great quantity of onion until the beans break and the meat falls off the bone. It is home cooking rather than restaurant food, and it belongs to cold months and to households cooking on a budget. Beans and a cheap cut of beef, cooked long enough, produce something substantial out of very little, and South African families have been making versions of it for generations. What marks this particular version out is that it uses convenience products as seasoning: a packet of dry oxtail soup mix, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and a beef bouillon cube, alongside red wine and tomato paste. That is characteristic of a certain era and style of South African home cooking rather than a mark against it, and the packet soup mix does real work, thickening the broth as well as seasoning it. It is served with bread, and the bread is not optional.
Sugar beans, the speckled beans used here, are a staple of South African cooking, and slow-cooked bean and beef stews of this kind belong to the country's domestic winter repertoire.
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself.
Put the sugar beans in a large container, cover with several inches of cool water and soak for 8 hours or overnight.
Combine the beef chuck and onions in a large pot over medium heat.
Cook until the beef is tender and falling off the bone, about 1 1/2 hours.
Transfer the beef to a cutting board, discard the bones and cut the meat into bite sized pieces. Put the onions in a bowl.
Pour the beans and their soaking water into the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the beans are tender, about 1 hour, adding more water if needed.
Stir the beef and onions back in and bring the soup to a boil.
Dissolve the bouillon cube in the hot water in a bowl.
Stir in the red wine, tomato paste, dry soup mix, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and cayenne pepper.
Gradually mix this into the boiling soup, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes until the flavours combine.
2 reviews
Couldn't find speckled sugar beans in my local supermarket so had to trek down to an ethnic grocery store on London Road for them. So glad I bothered though, using that dry oxtail soup packet alongside the red wine gives the gravy an unbelievable depth. Meat was completely falling off the bone after the 90 minutes.
i was a bit doubtful about putting red wine and soy sauce inside bean soup, but my wife said we should follow it. soaked the sugar beans overnight as stated. Abeg the smell when the onions and beef chuck were simmering together was incredible, e sweet sha! took a bit longer than 165 mins for my beans to get properly soft though, make sure you start early o.