Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup
Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup is healthy vegetarian black bean soup made with dried black beans, and cooked in the slow cooker! It's a delicious easy and hearty weeknight dinner and is delicious topped with fresh cilantro, Greek yogurt, and served with tortilla chips!
It's been painfully cold here in Minnesota for the last week, and that means we've been eating one thing - lots and lots of soup! I made our favorite Chicken Noodle Soup last week, my Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings a couple of days ago, and now my staple Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup!
This vegetarian black bean soup is such an easy soup that is appealing to our entire family. My boys aren't the biggest fans of chicken, so they were happy when I served them this soup for the lack of chicken to work around, and I love having this meatless option.
This black bean soup uses dried beans instead of canned beans. Since the beans are the star of the show, it's worth the extra effort of soaking them overnight! Along with tasting better, dried beans are also more nutritionally dense, with more fiber, protein, iron, potassium, and magnesium than their canned counterparts. And while I wouldn't say either are expensive, dried beans are more economical.
Since nothing makes me crave soup more than cold weather, it seemed fitting to make soup this weekend. This soup definitely did the job of warming me up. This vegetarian soup is full of flavor, is packed with nutrition, and if you like things spicy, you can increase the spiciness to your liking with the peppers and spices. I also used an immersion blender to puree a little of the soup, making it a bit thicker, but still keeping most of the beans. I topped mine with plain Greek yogurt, and I think avocado slices and tortilla strips would work well, too!
Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup Questions
Can canned beans be used instead of dried beans?
Yes. You can substitute the dried beans for four cans of canned black beans. I really do love dried beans, as their texture is just so much heartier than canned, but canned beans will absolutely work.
How spicy is this soup?
As spicy as you want it! If you like spicy, add two jalapeños instead of one and add the cayenne pepper. I keep it on the mild side because I'm not huge fan of spicy and I serve this to my kids.
Can I keep this soup chunky?
Definitely! I like to use my immersion blender to puree part of the soup and keep it a little chunky, too. But you can skip that step, or puree it completely. It's totally up to you!
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Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup
Ingredients
- 1 lb dried black beans (or 4 cans black beans, drained and rinsed)
- 1 white onion diced
- 3 carrots diced
- 1 red pepper stem and seeds removed, diced
- 1-2 jalapenos diced (depending on how spicy you like it)
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 15 ounce can fire roasted tomatoes
- 1 ½ tablespoon cumin
- ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper can adjust to increase spiciness
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 cups vegetable broth
- 2 cups water
- ½ cup chopped cilantro
- sour cream or plain Greek yogurt for topping
Instructions
The Night Before:
- Rinse black beans in colander then soak in water in large bowl overnight, or 8-10 hours.
- After soaking, rinse beans again in colander.
- Place beans in slow cooker, along with chopped onion, carrots, bell pepper, garlic, jalapenos, tomatoes, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, vegetable broth, and water.
- Turn slow cooker on high and cook for 6 hours.
- Using an immersion blender, pulse soup 5-6 times until desired consistency.
- If you don't have an immersion blender, you can remove about 2 cups of the soup and puree in blender, then return to slow cooker.
- Stir in cilantro, and season with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Serve topped with sour cream or Greek yogurt.
- Enjoy!
Oh no!!! our heater has gone out in the dead of winter too. Major bummer. This soup sounds like the perfect way to warm up!
Meep, that sounds not fun at all! Glad to hear it was fixed (somewhat quickly)!
Also, this soup looks deeelicious. I could definitely use a bowl to warm up with 🙂
I LOVE black bean soup. I definitely want to make this! Thank God they fixed your heater quickly!
this soup looks delicious. i am a minneotan now too. my hubby and i moved here in july for him to go to law school. so far so good. 63 is COLD! i think i have all these ingredients and will be making this soup very soon!
Yay for a fellow Minnesotan! I'm a transplant too because of my husband 🙂
For this recipe, should we use a large (~29 oz) can if fire roasted tomatoes or just a small (~15 oz) one?
15 ounces. Thanks for pointing this out to me - I will update the recipe!
How long would this be cooked on low in the crockpot?