Black Bean Chipotle Slow Cooked Soup

Now that the CrockPot is in a place of honor on an appliance table and not buried in storage, I've been using it more and more.

Yesterday I made up Mary McDougall's Black Bean-Chipotle Slow-Cooker Soup from The Starch Solution book. I figured with Dr. McDougall about to release the Starch Solution certification program into the wild for free and Gustavo Tolosa is going to do an 8-week webinar covering a chapter a week, I may as well focus a little bit more on that book.

Black Bean-Chipotle Slow-Cooked Soup
prep: 10 minutes
cooking time: 8 hours
serves: 8 to 10

2 cups dried black beans
2, 16-ounce cans fire-roasted chopped tomatoes
4 ounce can chopped green chilies
2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/8 teaspoon chipotle powder
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Put the beans, tomatoes, chilies, chili powder, cumin, red pepper, and chipotle powder in a slow cooker. Stir in 6 cups of water.
Cover and cook on High for 8 hours.
Serve the soup hot, stirring in the cilantro as you serve it.


Mary McDougall
The Starch Solution

This recipe is also known as Slow Chipotle Black Bean Soup on the McDougall website. 

Here's a photo of it after just 4 hours on high in my Crockpot. The water level dropped over an inch already.

Notice how most of the water is already mostly boiled out. I left it on high for another 2 hours and at the 6 hour mark turned it down to low. More water had evaporated by then so I added a bit of boiling water and stirred. At 7 hours I turned it down to keep warm and tasted it - a bit flavorless to me, but I chose not to add anything at this point.

Dinner time and I served it over Mary's Corn Bread. I've been making this for so long I don't even look at the recipe any more and sometimes forget to add the cup of frozen corn. It's just as good without it. 

I chopped up a little cilantro to add to the Crockpot.

Uh, oh. I think I ruined it by doing that.

I'm one of those "cilantro is soap" people and used maybe a tablespoon of cilantro leaves, cut up real fine. The smell alone turned me off. I tried remove them as soon as I put them in the pot, but many had already sunk into what little liquid there was left. I served our bowls then spent 15 minutes pushing beans around and removing every trace of green I could find in my bowl. It still tasted like soap. My husband just shook his head, told me he'll take the leaves I took out of mine and pop them in his bowl, and then merrily munched away, helping himself to another piece of cornbread and bowl of this beany stuff. 

I can't call it a soup - it was way too thick and lacking in liquid for that. He said he'll call it "Soapy Chili" in the future. I growled at him and told him cilantro will never pass through my doorway ever again. He reminded me I said that multiple times in the past. I guess I never learn.

Without cilantro, this would be a great use for some of those black beans I loaded up on at the beginning of the covid panic, when stores like Amazon still had food in them. Now, just about any bean I click on says it's currently unavailable, whether from Amazon, Vitacost, or Rancho Gordo. I do plan on making this again, but maybe with spinach instead of cilantro next time.