Black Bean Soup

After various chats with a friend about all the lentil recipes I was making, my friend was inspired to buy a 25 bag of black beans. She lives here and doesn't have to eat the bag of beans in 8 weeks. She was kind and shared some of her black beans with me. She is a wonderful friend in that way.

Now to add some variety to our lentils we have black beans.

Wednesday is soup day here. It just works nicely with evening activities.

I found this Black bean soup recipe online and the best feature was that the beans did not need to be soaked. You just put the dry beans in the crockpot. That makes it so easy - you don't remember to soak the beans. You don't need to allow time for the beans to soak. The only thing is this recipe does need to be in the crockpot for about 8 hours.

1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 onion
1 Green paper
7 cloves garlic
1 pound black beans
6 cups water
2 cups vegetable broth
1 7 oz can diced green chilies
1 Tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp Thyme
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 bay leaves

For Garnish
sour cream
red bell pepper diced
cilantro
red onion

Directions:
Add olive oil to the crock pot and turn on highest setting. Chop onion and stir into the olive oil. Cover and let cooks while you chop the green bell pepper into 1 inch chunks. Stir in green bell pepper. Crush the garlic cloves directly into the crock pot. Stir and cover.
Rinse black beans. Add to crock pot along with water, broth, chilies, cumin, thyme, salt, pepper and bay leaves. Cover and cook on high at least 8 hours.
Before serving, partially puree soup with hand mixer or submersible hand-held blender. Mix until thick, but still with chunks of beans, onions and peppers visible. (I don't do that.)


We eat it with red onion, sour dream and if we have it cilantro.

Beth