Black Bean Soup

1 lb. GOYA dried black beans
1/3 cu. olive oil
2 cu. onions, chopped fine
1 cu. celery, chopped fine
1 cu. green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 cu. tomato, seeded and chopped
1 Tbs. garlic, crushed, minced and salted
1 tps. dried basil
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 bay leaf

The best way to make soup from dried beans is to use two pots. Rapidly boiling the beans in a separate pot has several advantages. The main reason is that dried beans will not cook on low heat, and good soup needs to simmer slowly. It also saves time, and makes soaking the beans beforehand unnecessary. And if you find out your beans are too old and won’t cook, you won’t lose all of your other ingredients.

In a 4 qt pot, put the black beans, two quarts of water, and two teaspoons of salt, on high heat. Bring to a roiling boil.

In a 6 qt. pot, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat. Sofrito or trinity? Why not both? Add the onions, celery, green pepper, and tomato. Season heavily with salt and fresh ground black pepper. (If you would rather not cook raw tomato, add a 1/4 cu. GOYA tomato paste after adding the beans.) This is a saute, not a sweat. Listen and you should hear it sizzling. Don’t stir it too often. Go slow, but let the onions and peppers brown a bit.

Meanwhile, stir and check the beans. Continue a roiling boil, adding more water if necessary. You want to get them just soft enough to be edible, but not cooked all the way. That will happen later.

When the vegetables are cooked, the onions should be transparent and tomato should be almost paste. Add the garlic and saute for another minute. If the beans aren’t ready yet, turn the heat off the 6 qt. pot and let it sit.

When the beans are ready, pour them into the other pot. Add the basil, cumin, and a large bay leaf. Reduce the heat to low, stir, cover, and simmer for at least an hour.  If you like, you can finish it with a bit of lime juice or cider vinegar.

 

This method works well for all kinds of bean soup. Let’s try split pea. Because who doesn’t love a mouthful of green peaness? Start the dried split peas in the salted water in the first pot. Instead of sofrito, we’ll use mirepoix in the second pot. Add two cups of onion, a cup of celery, a cup of carrots, and a couple of teaspoons of garlic, to the olive oil. Season heavily with salt and fresh ground black pepper. This time we are going to sweat, not saute. So when you listen, you should not hear it sizzling. After the split peas are broken up, and the onions are translucent, add the peas to the second pot. Then add a bay leaf and teaspoon of ground sage. Now that the peas have a head start, it should only take an hour or so to simmer.

How about lentil? Let’s use mirepoix again, with even more garlic. After you mix the lentils and vegetables together, add a half a cup of chopped parsley, a bay leaf, and two tablespoons of tomato paste. When it is done simmering, finish with a third of a cup basil chiffonade. Stack fresh basil leaves on top of each other, and roll them into a tight cylindrical shape. Then take a paring knife and slice perpendicular to the roll, so you get thin strips. Remove the soup from the heat, stir in the raw basil, and let it sit for five minutes.

Minestrone? Get five pots…