It's winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, but in my particular region - Southern Ontario, instead of being snowed in, we're being gloomed in. Say what you want about snow, but at least it's bright white. The current colour palette outside of my office window is bilge pump grey.
Either way, it's soup season. Soup is kind of my thing. This black bean soup is made with canned black beans, cumin, coriander, vegetable or chicken broth and oranges. It can be made vegan, vegetarian or normal person.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. omg. I wish I could have seen your face after that line.
O.K., so black bean soup isn't the most beautiful of soups, but it's comforting, filling and absolutely delicious. If you want to go the vegetarian or vegan route use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth throughout the recipe.
Gather your Ingredients
chicken broth ◻︎ black beans ◻︎ onion ◻︎ garlic ◻︎ carrot ◻︎ celery ◻︎ oranges ◻︎ lime ◻︎ cumin ◻︎ coriander ◻︎ pepper ◻︎ olive oil
Steps
TIP - If you're a lazy cook who ends up eating cookies for dinner because it's faster than cooking, here's a tip: PREP YOUR INGREDIENTS IN THE MORNING. By the time dinner rolls around making dinner won't seem so overwhelming.
- Prep your ingredients. Drain the beans, measure out the spices, dice the onion, crush the garlic, chop the celery and carrots then peel and section the oranges.
If you're prepping in the morning, cover everything and put it in the refrigerator until you're ready to take the next cooking steps.
- Sauté onions & garlic in oil until translucent.
- Add spices to pot and toast until aromatic (around 10 seconds) then add carrots and celery. Cook until softened.
- As you cook, deglaze the pan with your 2 cups of reserved chicken broth. This adds flavour and prevents burning any fond.
- Add 3 cups of chicken broth and the drained but NOT rinsed beans. All that saucy stuff on the beans and at the bottom of the can is full of bean flavour.
- Simmer for 30 minutes.
- After 30 minutes of simmering, add oranges, a squeeze of lime juice and pepper. Simmer another 15 minutes.
- Add contents of pot to a blender and blend until smooth. Add as much of your reserved 2 cups of chicken broth as you'd like to thin the soup.
Garnish with a dollop of sour cream and a squeeze of lime juice. If you have cilantro around chop some of that up and add it to the top too. (you can also mix some lime juice into sour cream to make a lime sour cream to top the soup with)
VEGANS: You know what to do. Use a cashew or tofu based sour cream.
This recipe came together after spending years trying to replicate a soup I used to get at Toronto's The Swan restaurant. It was a velvety, blended black bean soup with Latin flavours and NO tomatoes.
I tried a lot of online soup recipes in my quest but none of them were what I was looking for and some of them were just plain bad.
That's what I get for using random Internet sites (like this one 😆) to get a good recipe. I was looking for good soup and sometimes Internet recipes aren't what you'd call ... good.
When in doubt, I usually go with Serious Eats or Epicurious for recipes.
Serious Eats often looks at the science of cooking and Epicurious - well they have squirrel recipes which means they're nothing if not adventurous.
By the time I finally landed on this as my final recipe I couldn't even remember what the original soup tasted like - but I knew this one was really good.
I didn't steer you wrong with the Antojitos did I? No. No, I did not. So I suggest if you're looking for the best Black Bean Soup recipe, you try this one.
Creamy Black Bean Soup
Classic black bean soup with flavours of black bean, cumin, corriander and a hint of acid from oranges and lime..
Ingredients
- 2 cans black beans (14 oz each)
- 3 cups chicken stock + 2 cups more for thinning ( vegetable stock for vegetarians/vegans )
- 2 tablespoons oil (approximately)
- 1 cup onions, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 large carrot, chopped small
- 1 stalk celery, chopped small
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander (more if you love coriander)
- ½ teaspoon ground cumin (more if you love cumin)
- 2 oranges, peeled, sectioned and seeded (Sumo oranges if you can find them)
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- Squeeze of fresh lime juice
Instructions
- Prep your ingredients. (drain beans, chop carrot, celery, onion and garlic, peel and section oranges removing visible membrane.)
- In a pot, sauté onions and garlic in oil until translucent.
- Add coriander and cumin to the bottom of the pot to toast until aromatic (10 seconds or so). Add carrot & celery then sauteé until tender. (you can add a few tablespoons of broth to speed things up)
- Add beans and broth to contents in pot. Simmer ½ an hour.
- Add orange, pepper and lime juice to the pot (just a squeeze of lime … you can add more later). Simmer 15 minutes.
- Remove pot from heat.
- Pour soup into blender and blend until smooth. Add the reserved broth to the blender until the soup is the consistency you like.
- Serve with a dollop or swirl of sour cream on top and fresh a fresh squeeze of lime juice.
Nutrition Information
Yield 10 Serving Size 1Amount Per Serving Calories 149Total Fat 4gSaturated Fat 0gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 3gCholesterol 1mgSodium 403mgCarbohydrates 23gFiber 7gSugar 5gProtein 7g
It's good. Even though it is on the Internet. But the difference between the regular Internet and my Internet, is my Internet doesn't lie.
My Internet also doesn't have squirrel recipes.
I really should make this before leaving a comment, but I just wanted to let you know about "Once Upon a Chef" - Jenn Segal is the chef and her website has some very, very good recipes. Her Black Bean Soup is another one I have to try - maybe I should invite some friends over, make both of them and have a taste test. That'd be fun.
Made this soup tonight as part of our new Soup-er Sunday line up! It was amazing! Subbed in a tsp of garam masala since I didn't have coriander and added salsa Verdi and Tapatio hot sauce as a garnish. Wow wow wow! Looked like a bowl of mud, but tasted amazing. 😍
That sounds good. :) I know it's just horrible looking.😆 But SUCH good flavour. ~ karen!
I don't know... no squirrel recipes here... seems kinda suspicious. 🤔
Salmon usually goes great with black bean soup.
That is if you didn't develop some weird stomach thing that causes the smell of fish to make you vomit. Then I'd avoid it. But it used to taste so good before the smell thing. So "normal" people might like it... 😉
Glad to know you're still alive! 🙃
(Mindy - cats lost his fight with cancer last week. 😭)
I used dried bean soaked overnight and cooked up. I'd been planning to use them to make Kenji's black bean burgers (which are truly awesome) but saw this recipe and made this instead. Was NOT disappointed. Amazing soup. I used garam masala instead of coriander, but did everything else, including the chopped fresh cilantro leaves at the end. Fabulous soup. Oh, and I also chopped in a dried hot pepper 'cos I like spicy. Delish!
I don't know why I've never added some chile! I love heat too. :) Glad you liked it, it really is one of my favourites. ~ karen!
I wasn't feel well today and was spending the day in bed. I was scrolling through my emails and found this one. I can't say it looks delicious but I do love black bean soup and this looked easy. I was going to make it with your weird bacon appetizers too. You know, offset healthy with not-so-healthy. I figured I'd make the bacon things first and discovered I don't have toothpicks. If I was feeling better I would have gone down to my basement and made my own by cutting a board up with my miter saw. Oh well. So I pulled everything out for the soup-celery, carrots, onions-check. Beans, broth, cumin-check. Uh oh. No coriander, no sour cream, and one small orange. I used Bittersweet Farms Spices of India (best spice mix company ever) which has coriander in it, Greek yogurt, and a splash of orange juice to make up for the missing one. I sprinkled pumpkin seeds on top and it was delicious. Thank you for such an easy, quick recipe.
Perfect! I had to laugh because as I was reading your comment I wanted to scream THAT'S OK. JUST MAKE IT ... it'll be fine. Glad you have such good improve skills - Greek yogurt is my go-to when I'm out of sour cream as well. ~ karen!
Love this recipe! 1/2 tsp salt works well. I cooked dried black beans in my instant pot and proceeded with the recipe. Yummy! I did add diced ham after the blender for some oomph. To die for.
My internet has lots of squirrel recipes! :)
Hi Natli! Yes you'd definitely need to add salt if you're using dried beans. I maybe would have even oomphed the amount up a bit. :) Glad you liked it! ~ karen
I left the bilge water weather in Ohio to the sunny climes in Arizona. I just couldn’t take it anymore. And the soup looks delicious though I did think it was a big bowl of chocolate pudding!
I knew there were people that were going to think that!😂 ~ karen!
Perfect addition to Soup Wednesday line up.
I expect to hear back from you Wednesday. ~ karen!
Fabulous! that's coming from a gal that came up with a recipe for BB Soup al la New Orleans. I thought mine was great (no tomatoes)a but this is the Bees Knees. Thank you.
That's great Connie, I'm glad you tried it and liked it (so quickly!). ~ karen!
This looks delicious! And as a vegan, your line about normal people cracked me up.
Looks....creamy. lol! Ahem. We do eat with our eyes, so I'd add a little cilantro and a few slices of radish and a half orange wheel garnish if I was serving to guests, but wow! The orange intrigues me and will definitely be trying this. Thanks, Karen! Happy new year!
It's VERY good, you'll like it. My mother and I were talking about how unappetizing it looks, lol. I'd normally add cilantro now that you mention it but I couldn't find any out in the garden yet. Normally there's some I can scrounge. The radish kind of confuses me, but go nuts! ~ karen!
Going to use up some of my pandemic black beans that are going out of prime time in making this soup - it looks great. I HATE cilantro but coriander if fine. This sounds like my kind of goodness. Glad to have you back refreshed and happy or maybe tired and wishing for another week. A new garden guide? Yippee.
The photography is a delight for the eyes. Especially the first photo - still life of the raw ingredients. Artfully posed! Museum quality. Constructive criticism: photo of the Chef is missing.
Happy Ne Year! This soup looks like the weather here in central Ohio, but it sounds wonderful! I’ll try it next week.
Reminds me of the Brazilian Black Bean soup from the Moosewood cookbook, although they use 10 cloves of garlic, orange juice and throw in a red pepper. They also cook the beans from scratch because that how they roll at the Moosewood restaurant.
THANK YOU for a soup recipe that doesn't have tomatoes. Life would be easier if I liked tomatoes, but I just don't. I never have.
hi Karen:
I like to use the bean liquid in the can as part of the stock amount. Do you think this is a good idea.
Epicurious has really great recipes ! I’ll have to try this !
Yum! This is a perfect bilge pump gray day recipe just like your heirloom tomato soup recipe! I made that Friday, nothing like grilled cheese, tomato soup and a fresh salad! Happy New Year, Karen!
Hmmm 🤔 Salt?
Or are you assuming there’s enough salt if using canned beans?
This soup looks super intriguing and excited to make it :)
If not using canned beans, soaking dried ones overnight in water with a tsp or so of baking soda, will dispel all the gasses. (Learned that from Yotam Ottolenghi). Ya gotta dump the soaking water though.
Hey - good to see you this post - I was askeered you'd run away from your crazy fans. Speaking only for myself of course - lol- Sounds like a winning hearty recipe to which I'd probably add cooked ham morsels or maybe cooked bacon? Gotta be crystal clear this ain't no vegan insanity even to the casual observer.
How about good to see you post this? DOH!
I actually brought Betty some of this soup over last night and got a phone call immediately after she finished it saying how delicious it was. According to Betty the lime juice is very important for the whole experience. I have definitely not run away I was working on a Quick Start Gardening Guide last week. :) ~ karen!
A day without some Karen is like a day without sunshine. Also happens to be the weather reality here in Chicago of late.
Now I'm just thinking about the antojitos. Thanks a lot. 🤤
Oh, lord, now so am I. ~ karen!