Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Sweet Potato & Black Bean Soup

Do you use canned black beans or do you make your own? Since canned beans can be as much as 1.00 something a can, I decided to make my own. After doing some research, I settled on cooking them in the Slow Cooker. I soaked the beans for about 6 hours and cooked them for about 4 hours on high. The interesting thing was, my black beans became brown beans. It seemed most of the dark color was either in the water from soaking or in the water from cooking. Has anyone else experienced this?

I've seen quite a few recipes for soup with black beans and sweet potatoes or butternut squash. With these recipes as inspiration, I created my own recipe. This recipe makes a delicious but very spicy soup. I love the flavor from the addition of just a touch of cinnamon. You could easily add chicken or even some sausage to this soup.


Slow Cooker Black Bean and Sweet Potato Soup

1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 T. olive oil
1 large sweet potato, diced
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 cups black beans
1 can Rotel peppers
1T. chili powder
2 t. cumin
1 t. smoked paprika
1/2 t. cinnamon

Chop garlic and onion. Heat olive oil in a skillet until sizzling, add garlic and onion. Saute until soft. Dice sweet potato. Combine all ingredients in crock pot. Cook on low 8 hours.

I am linking this to Tasty Tuesday's, Tuesday's at the Table, Souper Sunday at Kahakai Kitchen and Tuesday Night Supper Club.

14 comments:

  1. THat actually always happens to me with black beans. I haven't quite figured out why, but so long as they taste good I don't really care! This soup is my kind of meal! Delicious.

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  2. If you have a pressure cooker, you will find your beans will be more like canned after cooking. I make up a batch and freeze them in quart zip bags.

    This soup sounds delicious and is healthy too. I'm anxious to try it. Thanks Julie!

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  3. I've never made beans dried, only cans. I should give it try one of these days! The soup looks delicious! Love black beans and sweet potatoes, such good flavor in there!

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  4. Wow! I would have never thought of putting sweet potatoes in a soup like that. IT sounds good! :)

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  5. Sounds good. I need to remember to give Norm stuff with beans in it only on Saturday as we don't go anywhere on Sundays...

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  6. Crazy as it sounds, I have never used dry black beans. Maybe it's because I use pinto and northerns so much more often. I think this soup might just get me to go buy a bag of black beans!

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  7. love this recipe sounds healthy and filling

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  8. I don't have much experience using dried beans either, but I would like to get into it more. I love recipes like this that use sweet potatoes in savory way. This looks great!

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  9. This is one I've never tried before...I think the combination sounds strange but I've found that those are sometimes the best tasting!!!

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  10. Actually, I do both, but will use canned beans whenever I can get away with it. Your soup sounds really delicious. I hope you have a great day. Blessings...Mary

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  11. This soup would really make my husband happy. I admit I do bake navy beans, but I usually buy canned black beans.
    Rita

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  12. This has so many of my favorite flavors. I just know it will be on the menu very soon! Thanks so much for linking up.

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  13. This looks like a very hearty and satisfying dish. Thanks so much for sharing it at Souper Sundays this week. BTW--I use both dried and canned and tend to lose color on the dried ones when they are cooked too. ;-)

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  14. I made this for Secret Recipe Club and just posted about it on my blog. Really delicious and it gave me my second opportunity to use black beans!

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