Black Bean Soup

This black bean soup uses pantry ingredients and comes together in under 15 minutes.

Black Bean Soup is one of the simplest pantry meals you can make since its main ingredient, black beans, comes from the pantry. The key to a delicious black bean soup is to use some other flavorful ingredients. One of my favorite things to add to boost soup flavors is cured meats like ham, bacon, or kielbasa (check out this Kale and Kielbassa Soup to see what I mean!).

For today’s Black Bean Soup, we’ve added some Canadian bacon. I love Canadian bacon because it is so lean while having so much flavor. You can use ham, kielbasa, or cooked bacon if you have any of those instead. A little bit of cured meat really goes a long way to make pantry meals tasty! (Note that you can skip the meat entirely and use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock to make this a vegetarian soup).

To make the soup, you lightly brown the Canadian bacon or ham in some oil first. Then in a blender you puree together canned (or cooked) black beans, canned diced tomatoes, garlic powder, chicken stock, salt, and pepper.

Heat up that black bean mixture in a pot and then stir in the Canadian bacon. Once it’s heated through, remove it from the heat and stir in some lime juice. If you have fresh limes, you can alternatively serve the soup with lime wedges on the side. But, if you keep a bottle of lime juice in your fridge, this is a good place to use a dribble or two of it.

Then you just ladle the hot soup into bowls. If you have some fresh ingredients like tomatoes, jalapenos, cheese, avocado, or cilantro, you can top the bowls of soup with that, but the soup is good straight up on its own too!

Quick Black Bean Soup

Contributor: Christine Pittman

This black bean soup uses pantry ingredients and comes together in under 15 minutes.

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• Author: Christine Pittman
• Prep Time: 5 minutes
• Cook Time: 10 minutes
• Total Time: 15 minutes
• Yield: 4 servings 1x
• Category: Entrée
• Method: Stovetop
• Cuisine: Mexican

Print Recipe

Ingredients

Units USM Scale 1x2x3x

• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 6 oz. Canadian bacon or ham
• 3–15 oz. low-sodium black beans
• 1–15 oz. canned diced tomatoes
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 cup low-sodium chicken stock
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 2 tsp. lime juice
• Optional garnishes: chopped tomato, minced jalapeno, chopped cilantro, chopped avocado, lime wedges

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Instructions

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the Canadian bacon slices. Cook until lightly browned, 1-2 minutes. Remove to a cutting board.
2. Meanwhile, empty the cans of black beans and diced tomatoes with their liquid to a large blender, along with the garlic powder, chicken stock, salt, and pepper. Pulse until all is in very small pieces (if your blender isn’t big enough, do this in two batches).
3. Put the bean mixture in the pot over medium-high heat and cover it, stirring every few minutes until heated through.
4. Meanwhile, finely chop the Canadian bacon and add it to the soup.
5. Remove soup from heat. Stir in the lime juice.
6. Ladle soup into bowls and top with optional garnishes, if desired.

Notes

Skip the Canadian bacon and use vegetable broth to make this dish vegetarian!