Mexican Black Bean Corn Soup
This is one of my family's favorite soup recipes. I get requests for it all the time. Cooking your own black beans and vegetable broth makes this soup even more delicious.
This is one of my family's favorite soup recipes. I get requests for it all the time. Cooking your own black beans and vegetable broth makes this soup even more delicious.
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- black pepper to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon chipotle powder
- 1 lime juiced
- 3 stalks celery diced
- 1 onions finely chopped
- 6 cloves garlic cloves
- 2 carrot diced
- 5 cups vegetable broth
- 4 (15 oz) cans black beans
- 1 (15 oz) can whole sweet corn drained unsweetened
- 1 (14.5 oz) can fire roasted tomatoes diced
- 4 teaspoons cumin
- 1/2 bunch fresh cilantro chipped to garnish
- Carbohydrate 7.95033609941215 g
- Cholesterol 0 mg
- Fat 0.269538999225243 g
- Fiber 1.47107495645335 g
- Protein 0.89701820852384 g
- Saturated Fat 0.0413024303139719 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (195g)
- Sodium 331.444501214847 mg
- Sugar 6.47926114295879 g
- Trans Fat 0.0578768589129873 g
- Calories 34 calories
Step-by-step
- In a large pot, sauté the onion, celery, carrots and garlic in 1 cup of vegetable broth over medium heat for 6-7 minutes. Add chipotle chili powder, roasted cumin, and black pepper and cook for another minute or two. Stir in the remaining vegetable broth, 4 cups (or 2.5 cans) of beans, and sweet corn. Turn to high heat and bring to a boil.
- Add remaining 3 cups (or 1.5 cans) of beans and crushed tomatoes to a Vitamix or blender and process until smooth. Stir into soup when boiling, reduce heat to medium, and simmer for 15 minutes until beans and vegetables are done to your desired tenderness.
- Taste test. Add Herbamare or salt to taste and lime juice.
- Serve in bowls and garnish with fresh chopped cilantro.
Many home cooks make the mistake of boiling whole beans directly in watery broth, which produces a thin, disjointed pot where the liquid fails to cling to the aromatics. Achieving a cohesive texture requires exploiting the starches locked inside the legumes. Puréeing a portion of the black beans with fire-roasted tomatoes introduces both natural emulsifiers and glutamates, creating a rich colloidal suspension that coats the palate thoroughly.
Sautéing the diced onions, celery, carrots, and minced garlic in a small amount of vegetable broth rather than oil utilizes water-heat transfer to soften cellular walls efficiently within six to seven minutes. Toasting the ground cumin, chipotle powder, and black pepper directly in the dry aromatics for sixty seconds releases fat-soluble volatile compounds into the pot before the remaining liquids dilute the spices. Blending half the beans and tomatoes creates a heavy puree that thickens the simmering broth during its fifteen-minute reduction. Fresh lime juice added at the very end provides an acid spike that brightens these heavy earth tones.
Stored properly in an airtight container in the refrigerator, this preparation actually improves over forty-eight hours as starches fully hydrate and the capsaicin from the chipotle mellows into the background.
