Meet my go-to black bean soup recipe! This quick and easy black bean soup is healthy and delicious. It’s also vegetarian and vegan when you use vegetable broth!
Watch the Video
Related: For our soup using white beans, try this white bean and veggie soup!
Making Our Favorite Black Bean Soup
When we’re looking for a comforting meal packed with flavor, this easy black bean soup is where we turn. It’s made with previously cooked or canned black beans, onion, carrot, garlic, and flavorful spices. This soup is so good, you will want a batch in the freezer at all times. It’s perfect for busy nights as well as when we feel we’ve over-indulged. Here are a few more reasons we love this black bean soup recipe:
- This healthy soup is easy to make and tastes incredible.
- There’s no fancy ingredients and inexpensive to make.
- It keeps well and tastes better the next day, making it perfect to pack for lunches or make ahead for dinner tomorrow night. Leftover soup will last about three days in the refrigerator.
- It’s healthy, comforting, and vegetarian/vegan (when you use veggie broth).
- You can freeze it up to a month, if not more!
How To Make Black Bean Soup
Making black bean soup is simple; it all happens in one pot! To make it, cook onions and carrots in olive oil until soft and sweet. Throw in more flavor with garlic, ground cumin, oregano, red wine vinegar, and chipotle chiles (see my note below).
To make the broth, pour in vegetable stock, canned diced tomatoes, and a bay leaf (you can also use chicken stock). Then, finally, stir in black beans and simmer until the veggies are tender — about 20 minutes. Before serving, taste the soup and season with salt and a little extra acid from vinegar or lime juice. I love lime juice for this and love how it makes the flavors of the soup pop.
Most often, we enjoy this as a broth soup (like in our photos), but you have the option to blend black bean soup so that it is creamy. For a thickened soup, blend a portion of the soup and add it back. Or blend the entire pot using an immersion blender to make it thick and creamy.
Making Spicy Black Bean Soup
If you’ve never used canned chipotle chiles in your kitchen before, I highly recommend that you start. The cans are small and inexpensive. We’ve found them sold in most grocery stores (usually next to hot sauces or canned enchilada sauces).
Specifically, you are looking for chipotle chiles in adobo sauce. Chipotles are dried, smoked jalapeños. They are smoky and quite spicy. Adobo sauce is a spicy, red sauce that packs a major punch of flavor. For this soup, I usually add one pepper, which I mince, along with a little sauce. This amount adds enough spice to the soup so that you notice it. For an extra spicy black bean soup, add more.
Since you’ll have some peppers leftover, make sure you save them for other recipes. We’ve used them in in our vegetarian bean chili, to add spice to our black bean and sweet potato tacos, and to spice up mayo for these seared salmon burgers.
More Easy Recipes with Black Beans
Our Favorite Black Bean Soup
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This quick black bean soup recipe is healthy, delicious, and easy to make. It’s also vegetarian and vegan when you use vegetable broth. See our article above for an explanation of chipotles in adobo sauce.
Makes 4 to 6 servings
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup diced onion (1/2 large onion)
3/4 cup diced carrots (1 large carrot)
1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar or lime juice
1/2 to 1 pepper from 7-oz. tin chipotle chiles in adobo or use 2 tablespoons hot sauce, see notes
1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes, try fire roasted tomatoes
4 cups vegetable stock, see our homemade veggie broth
4 (15-ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed or use 6 cups cooked black beans
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
For serving: Avocado, lime wedges, cilantro, sour cream, cheese
Directions
1Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven or deep pot over medium heat, and then add the onions and carrot. Cook, stirring often, until they have softened slightly and smell sweet, about 5 minutes.
2Stir in the garlic, cumin, oregano, and cook for for 30 seconds. Add the vinegar, chipotle peppers, can of tomatoes, broth, black beans, and bay leaf. Bring to a simmer, taste, and then season with salt and pepper.
3Simmer the soup until the carrots are tender and the broth reduces slightly, about 20 minutes. Stir in the cilantro and the juice from half a lime (or substitute the lime with an additional tablespoon of vinegar).
4For a brothy soup (like in our photos and video), serve the soup straight away. For a thicker, more velvety soup, transfer 1/4 of the soup to a blender and blend until smooth. Pour the blended portion back into the soup and serve.
Adam and Joanne’s Tips
- Chipotle chiles in adobo sauce: We use 1/2 to 1 whole pepper, which adds a little heat to the soup. For a spicier soup, add more, but be careful, the peppers do pack a punch. Find canned chipotles in adobo sauce in most grocery stores, usually near hot sauces or enchilada sauces.
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA database to calculate approximate values. The recipe makes about 10 to 12 cups of soup.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
Nutrition Per Serving
Serving Size
1 cup
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Calories
169
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Total Fat
2.9g
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Saturated Fat
0.5g
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Cholesterol
0mg
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Sodium
387.2mg
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Carbohydrate
27.4g
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Dietary Fiber
10.6g
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Total Sugars
2.4g
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Protein
9g