Black Bean Soups

I mentioned before that I had used a recipe for black bean soup in the past that I liked and I found the link today. It is called Black Bean Vegetable Soup from allrecipes.com. When I make it I add an extra can of black beans and I use the Muir Glen Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes. I often skip the step in which you are supposed to puree one can of beans with the tomatoes. I like chunks in my soup!


Today I am trying Southwestern Black Bean Soup since I wanted to use my crockpot (it is cold and rainy here today) and I had a bag of dried black beans to use up. I used two 14.5 ounce cans of diced tomatoes since it was unclear what size cans to use. I also added about 1 TB of chipotle chili instead of the red pepper flakes since I had about that much left over in the fridge. This soup will probably be spicy! Oh, and I also added 1 TB of bouillon mix since I find it makes my soups taste better. There was far too much liquid for my crockpot so I removed about 2 cups of the liquid and saved in case I need to add it later. I will let you know how it tastes later tonight!OK, verdict is in. It took a little over 6 hours to cook at high in the crockpot but the beans did finally get soft. I put the immersion blender into it for a few spins after it was fully cooked to help thicken it up a bit. This soup was definitley NOT spicy. It was actually a little blah. I added approximately 1/2 cup chopped cilantro (necessary!) into the soup and then we mixed some salsa and Smoked Chipotle Tabasco into each serving. After those additons the soup was great. I made some plain polenta to have on the side since we love it!