Following on from yesterday’s post about making do with what you have in your fridge, I’d like to share my fail-safe way of ensuring that you can always have a fast, hot, homemade lunch without leaving the house to buy ingredients. All it takes it this:

Always keep a can of white beans in your cupboard.

The particular type of white bean doesn’t really matter. Cannellini beans, navy beans, Great Northern beans, even butter beans—any of them will do. I like to keep little tins of steamed cannellini beans around because they’re nice and tender and they’re a handy size, but you can use anything you like.

I posted my default bean soup recipe on Principia Gastronomica a while back, and I still stand by it as a really fast way to whip up a really tasty soup. The key ingredients are oregano, garlic and lemon, which combine to create a remarkably fresh-tasting soup in a matter of minutes.

If you’re missing one or the other of those ingredients, however, don’t fret. You could use rosemary, thyme or basil in place of the oregano and you’d still have a nice soup, and even the garlic and lemon aren’t critical, though they’re very nice. Essentially, if you have white beans, some veggie or chicken broth, and ideally a bay leaf, you can make a decent lunch.

If you’re lucky enough to have other odds and ends sitting around your house, by all means, use them too. Anything smoked—ham, bacon, smoked sausage—will partner brilliantly with white beans. I happened to have a bit of kielbasa in my fridge today, so I quickly sautéed it with a tiny bit of chopped onion, tipped in a small can of butter beans and a bit of vegetable broth, and simmered it all for about 15 minutes to make a smoky soup for lunch (which is what prompted me to write this blog post in the first place).

You can make an even richer—if somewhat more time-consuming—soup by sautéeing a battuto of finely chopped carrot, celery and onion in olive oil before adding your other ingredients: garlic, herbs, and finally, beans. You can add plenty of other vegetables, too, like cabbage or zucchini, and ultimately you could head in the direction of a minestrone by using tomatoes in your soup if you’ve got them.

And if you’re really hungry, and it’s really cold, and you want a real starch-fest for lunch, you could make pasta fagioli with beans and small pasta like macaroni. Served up with lots of olive oil and parmesan, it’s right up there with macaroni and cheese as the ultimate comfort food.

So there you go. White beans: probably my favorite cupboard staple. If you have beans, you have lunch.