This is a pot of deliciousness bubbling on your stove!

I’ve got the quickest, easiest recipe for my wonderful readers that I’ve ever published on my blog. Believe me, it does not get any easier than this! And the results are DELICIOUS! What is the recipe for, you ask? It’s bean soup! Or some people call it “ham and beans”. Oh, and that less than thirty minutes timeframe also includes making corn muffins too. What a deal!

Beans, as the children’s rhyme implies, are good for your heart and other parts of your body too. They are a very healthy food choice.  Beans, or legumes, are the best non meat source of protein out there. They are made up of high quality carbohydrates and are rich in folate, magnesium, iron, potassium, vitamin B6, quercetin, zinc, vitamin C, and soluble fiber (which can sometimes lead to the rest of the children’s rhyme! :)). These nutrients help lower cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure, and can help reduce the risk of coronary artery disease, diabetes and osteoporosis. Soluble fiber helps keep you fuller for longer, thus aiding in weight loss. That’s a big bang for your nutritional buck! Beans are one of the most important weapons in my nutritional arsenal, and most importantly I think they taste really good when prepared properly.

Some of the best food sources of legumes are black beans, navy beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, white beans, lima beans, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), split peas, lentils, soybeans (edamame), and black-eyed peas, and I love them all. My favorite, though, is pinto beans and that’s what I used to create this super easy recipe that I’m going to share with you right now!

Valerie’s less than 30 minute bean soup and corn muffins

•  1 medium onion chopped
• 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 ham steak chopped
• 2 ham shanks
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 large jar pinto beans (you can use other beans but I think pintos make a more flavorful soup)
• 1 cup of water (I added the water to the jar and swished it around to get out all the bean remnants)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• Box of corn muffin mix

Sautéed onions and ham in the pot ready to go!

So the first thing you do is preheat the oven for the corn muffins following the directions on the box. Then I add the olive oil to the pot and sauté the onions until soft. Next, add the ham steak pieces and sauté those for about a minute. Then, add the ham shanks for another minute.

These are the beans I used for my soup!

To the pot that has the onions and ham, I added the pinto beans and all the liquid in the jar. Then, I added about a cup of water to the jar and swirled it around to get all of the juices out of it and tossed it into the pot. Last, I added the minced garlic, salt and pepper, put the flame on low medium, clapped the lid on the pot and that’s it! Oh, make sure to stir the beans around occasionally to get all the flavors to mix and prevent the beans from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Corn muffin mixes I had on hand- one gluten free and one regular!

Next I prepared the corn muffins. I followed the directions on the box, which consisted of adding 1 egg, 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and 1/2 cup of milk to the mix, stirring, and adding the mix to the muffin tins I had prepared already with muffin liners. I also spray my tins with coconut oil spray even though I lined the tins because I don’t like when the tops of my muffins stick to the edges of the pan as they rise during baking.

Corn muffins ready for the oven!

These muffins baked at 400 degrees for 15-18 minutes. While they were baking I stirred the beans a couple more times to make sure they didn’t stick and turned the flame under the beans down to low at that point. Then, I took the muffins out of the oven and dished out the soup.

Ready to eat! Yummm!

The bean soup is salty, warm and flavorful, and the muffins are slightly sweet with a nice corn flavor that complements the soup. And that all happened in under thirty minutes! Yay! Better yet, the beans are so good for you, they provide you with potassium, magnesium, Vitamin C, folate, iron, B6, zinc, quercetin and soluble fiber to help your heart, blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, osteoporosis, diabetes and weight loss. They taste really delicious too! I hope you enjoyed this recipe and let me know if you try it, or if you have other bean recipes you’d like to share! Please eat delicious meals like this, they really satisfy you and will help you live a life of vitality- like Valerie!