Black Bean Soup

The weather is still not cooperating with me for the Gazpacho I wanted to blog about this week - but chilly weather means I can still justify writing about cold weather soups. (I'm looking for the silver lining here peeps - don't mistake my positive spin as actual happiness about the weather.)

Black Bean Soup is one of those things that is now a staple in my go-to soup repertoire because it is delicious, easy and adaptable.

I used to avoid making soup with dried beans because I wasn't organized enough to pre-soak the beans for 24 hours before I needed them. Even the "quick soak" methods weren't really my thing - BUT one day I decided to try to make the soup without pre-soaking just to see if it would work... And... success! This might not work for some applications but it works fine for a soup that you're expecting to be thick. (If you're a stickler for the rules, by all means soak the beans first. I'm not here to judge your excellent organizational skills.) If you were in a serious hurry, you could also just used canned black beans. You'll definitely need to rinse them until the water runs clear - but I use them for lots of recipes and they're great in a pinch for soup too.

Today's soup is vegetarian and seasoned with cumin, chilies and lime - but I've made it with Chorizo, chicken stock, with tomatoes and without. There are tons of options.

Black Bean Soup

Here's what I did today:

1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
16 oz bag dried black beans, rinsed
about 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Vegetable stock and/or water (I used about 16 cups)
about 1 tablespoon cumin
about 2 teaspoons chili powder
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in soup pot and add onions, carrots and celery. Saute about 5 minutes. Add the cumin and chili powder and rinsed black beans. After about one minute, add about 8 cups water. Keep checking water levels. You want the beans to cook and they'll absorb a LOT of water. You can gauge the amount of water you want to add based on the thickness you like your soup.

Let simmer on medium-high for about 3 hours, adding water as necessary. Add lime juice (and, if you're feeling citrus-y you could zest the lime as well) and season to taste.

There was some soup leftover at the end of the day and I decided to switch it up and turn it into a Southwestern Tomato, Corn and Black Bean Soup. I added frozen corn, canned diced tomatoes, some more vegetable stock and garnished with cilantro and shredded cheddar cheese. Had I left out the vegetable stock, it could have easily been Black Bean Chili.

Southwest Black Bean, Tomato and Corn Soup