Creamy Bean Pasta Fagiole

"This may be my favorite recipe, but that’s perhaps because I am a bean freak. By no means a traditional pasta fagiole, this version is a terrific expression of the creamy texture of a well-cooked bean and especially of the deep umami flavors that good beans reveal.

It’s totally worth your time to cook the beans from scratch; cooked beans freeze well, so you can cook up a pound or so, use some for this recipe, and freeze the rest for another dish later. Rancho Gordo is an excellent bean producer with an array of heirloom varieties available in many stores and online; I recommend them. If from-scratch beans aren’t possible, however, use good-quality canned beans; I like Eden Organic. Rinse canned beans well and use broth as a substitute for the bean cooking liquid.

Use a sturdy pasta noodle—rigatoni is a natural, but penne is also good—and do use the Parmigiano rind if you have one . . . which you probably do if you’re using real Parmigiano in your pasta recipes. And as you can tell by reading it, this recipe makes a lot and the dish is filling. Unlike most pastas, it keeps well for a couple of days in the refrigerator, so if you end up with leftovers, all the better."

Excerpted from Six Seasons of Pasta by Joshua McFadden with Martha Holmberg (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2025. Photographs by AJ Meeker. Illustrations by Abe Naylor.

Weight-volume equivalents and recipe style may differ from recipes developed and published by Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street.