Black Bean Soup

As I previously promised I am here to give y'all the oh so tasty, hearty, and healthy Black Bean Soup recipe.  I wish I had taken a picture of it b/c it looked delicious.  However, it was gobbled up way too fast, and I am a bit of a slacker in the picture taking department.

I actually made this soup last week and it's already been requested again.  Everyone loved it!  I mean absolutely everyone thoroughly enjoyed every bite of this soup.  My husband, my 1 year old, and a family friend ate this soup with gusto.  My little 1 year old (okay 16 months) was kicking her legs with each and every bite; she usually only does that with cookies, brownies, or peas.  Not only is this soup delicious, but it is really healthy.  I love when my family loves a good healthy and vegetarian recipe.  Don't you?

I made the soup as our main dish but we threw in some chips and corn tortillas for a little dipping fun as well as some fruit and we had plenty of tasty goodness.  We had enough soup to last us two days plus an extra small bowl to send home with our friend.  Overall, the soup makes a good amount, but if you have a big family and/or like a lot of leftovers I suggest doubling it.

Black Bean Soup
Slightly adapted from Our Best Bites cookbook

Ingredients:
A little bit of olive oil
1 cup diced or shredded carrots (you can use as many veggies as you want actually)
The recipe calls for 3/4 cup of diced celery but I omitted this due to my husbands anti-celery feelings
1 cup diced onion
1 Tbsp. of minced garlic
2 cans (15 oz) black beans rinsed and drained
1 can (3.5 oz) diced green chilies
4 cups beef broth (you could use water or vegetable broth if you are super vegetarian)
1 tsp salt
dash of pepper
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp dried oregano leaves
1 bay leaf (I just recently took to loving the flavor bay leaves can provide, be sure to give this a shot if you've been a bay leaf skeptic like me).
2 Tbsp of lime juice
Toppings of your choice:  tortilla chips, corn tortillas, cheese (we did cheddar and mozzarella), sour cream, green onions, cilantro, etc.

Directions:
Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat.  Add carrots, onion, any other veggies you desire, and garlic.  Saute the veggies until the onions are soft, or about 3 mins or so.

Add black beans, green chilies, and beef broth, and stir to mix them all together.  Add salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, oregano, and bay leaf to your soup.  I simmered the soup uncovered for approximately 20 minutes, but you can go as long as 30 minutes if you'd like.  Remove the pot from the stove and remove the bay leaf b/c it has now done its job.

If you have an immersion blender you can use that here.  However, if you are ghetto like me then pour the soup contents into your blender.  Now, if you doubled your soup recipe you will need to blend this in 2 batches b/c this one pot filled my entire blender.  Place the lid on your blender but be sure to remove the stopper to allow the heat to escape somewhere.  However, with the stopper removed you could make a large mess if you start to blend it.  Therefore, hold a paper towel over the stopper opening while you are blending the soup.

Blend/puree the soup until you reach a consistency and look that is most appealing to you.  This process took me only a few minutes and I pureed my soup to a good pureed mixture with no bean chunks for me.  Finally, pour your lime juice into the blender with the pureed soup and give it a couple of pulses to mix it in well.

Lastly, enjoy this tasty soup with as many or as few toppings as you want b/c it'll taste good no matter what.

Happy Fall soup eating!

MeganRuth