Black bean soup

If there is one type of food I could eat over and over, it's soup.  I love how comforting, warm, and overall awesome soups are.  Plus, 9 times out of 10 they're pretty good for you.  I call this a win.  So today, I want to share with you a bowl of my black bean soup.  I'm including my personal directions, not the kind a cookbook would give, in the hope that it demystifies my kitchen for you.  I hope you (ahem, Emily, ahem), enjoy!

What you need**:
Black beans (3 cups of fresh cooked, or 3 cans.  You pick)
2 ribs of celery
One onion, diced
1.5-ish cups chopped carrot
1 20-oz can of petite diced tomatoes
6 cups vegetable broth
2 Tbsp olive oil
bay leaves


What you do:

1. Chop your veg.  This sometimes takes a while.
2. Preheat your desired soup pot.  My stove is hotter than hades, so I use a medium-low setting.  Somewhere between there and medium is good.  Add your olive oil and coat the bottom of the pot.
3. Saute your onions, carrots, and celery until they are mostly soft.  I leave mine a little under-cooked so that they add a little texture.
4. Add beans and the entire can of tomatoes (including juice) to the pot.  Stir everything up.
5. Add your vegetable broth.  Stir again.
6. Add a couple of bay leaves.  Everyone swears they give stuff flavor.  I'm not convinced, but I go with it anyways.
7. Turn up the heat.  You want this bad boy boiling, so walk away, and have yourself a dance party for a minute or two.  Watched pot, and all that.
8. Once you're boiling, lower the heat again to low, and cover.  Let cook as long as you can stand it.  I recommend at least an hour, but it can go longer.  I usually declare cooking done after Ammon asks for the third time when it'll be ready.
9. Remove bay leaves.  Because they're dry, inedible, tough leaves.  Gross.
10. Transfer several cups of your soup to a blender.  Pulse it a few times, allowing the steam to escape in between pulses.  Stir back into your soup.  This should make your soup thicker, and give it a creamier consistency.  If you're not digging the consistency, repeat the step.  If your stick blender is handy, and the motor isn't dying (epic fail, stick blender!) you can pop that sucker in and blend to perfection.

Serve up that yumminess in your biggest table-appropriate bowl with some yummy bread topped with butter.  Heaven, I tell you.

So there you have it.  A recipe for soup, my personal directions, and then proof of its yum factor.  Short of having you over to try mine, I can do no more for you.  May the soup force be with you.


**I almost never actually measure my ingredients, so everything here is approx, and according to our tastes.  Feel free to make this work for you.