Soissons Bean Soup with Lardons

1. Take a large soup pot and bacon to it. Cook over moderate heat, simultaneously stirring for about 7 minutes or until.
2. Drain the water, collecting the fat and lardons.
3. In the soup pot, heat olive oil. Include carrot, onion, celery, and set on medium heat to cook while occasionally stirring. Let cook until the vegetables are softened, roughly about 8 minutes.
4. Add garlic, bay leaf, and 1 teaspoon each of the chopped thyme and rosemary and cook until the aroma is there or for about 2 minutes.
5. Include the drained beans, stock, and 3 tablespoons of the reserved lardons fat and let boil once.
6. Seethe the soup over low heat until the beans are soft. It will take about 1 ½ hours.
7. The soup and lardons can be stored in the fridge for up to 3 days. Re-crisp the bacon before you serve after refrigerating.

Trivia

Soissons Bean

• Soissons white beans are bigger than most species of beans and are being grown in the Aisne Department of France since the eighteenth century.
  The bean was at first developed in the region near Soissons (between Billy-sur-Aisne and Braine which are two towns in the Picardy Region in the Aisne Department), however, amid the twentieth century, its generation zone was pushed north, towards the valley of l'Ailette.

Lardons

• In the French cooking style, lardons are likewise utilized for larding, by threading them with a needle into meats that are to be braised or simmered.

The Oxford English Dictionary characterizes "lardon" as “the bits of bacon or pork which are embedded in meat during the time spent larding", offering supremacy to that process. As per the Middle English Dictionary, the most prominent usage of the word is in 1381, in a publication called Pegge Cook.