5-Ingredient Creamy White Bean and Garlic Soup

This white bean and garlic soup is the meal I make when I want comfort but not commitment. It's for those nights when the idea of chopping an onion feels like too much for me, when my fridge is half-empty, but I want something warm and creamy and grounding now, not after an hour of simmering. Enter this five-ingredient soup—a one-pot, weeknight-friendly situation that tastes far more luxurious than the effort it demands.

The problem with most quick, minimalist soups is that they're polite to a fault: perfectly fine, but flat, one-note, and not too memorable. This is because when you strip a recipe down to just a handful of ingredients, there's nowhere to hide—no layers of flavor built from long cooking times, no sneaky umami, no parade of garnishes doing damage control at the end. If it's going to taste good, the technique has to pull its weight.

This soup does just that. The key to its rich flavor is the garlic. Instead of starting with chopped raw garlic sautéed in oil (which can easily turn sharp or bitter if cooked too quickly and aggressively), the flavor foundation comes from whole, unpeeled garlic cloves toasted directly in a dry saucepan. It's a fast, slightly unconventional move that pays off. In just a few minutes, the skins blister and brown, and the cloves inside turn fragrant and mellow, with a sweetness that reads as slow-roasted rather than last-minute. Once peeled, roughly chopped, and gently warmed in olive oil, that garlic becomes the flavor base for the entire soup.

From there, the rest of the recipe is intentionally unfussy. A can of white beans—cannellini are ideal because of thin skins and creamy texture—goes in, liquid and all. That starchy bean liquid thickens the soup and helps it emulsify into something creamy without cream. Chicken or vegetable stock (your choice) and good olive oil fill in the gaps, turning the dish silky and rich without tipping into heaviness. A small hit of lemon juice and fresh herbs at the end cuts through the richness and sharpens all those rounded, garlicky flavors.

Like most five-ingredient recipes, this one is best viewed as a technique launching pad. Add shredded cooked chicken if you've got it. Finish with a dollop of yogurt or a drizzle of chili oil. A teaspoon of minced rosemary or sage plays especially well with the garlic and beans. But even in its simplest form, this soup delivers exactly what I want on a low-effort day.