Santa Fe Corn and Black Bean Soup

This is a stick-to-your-ribs kind of soup. The kind of soup you would never guess is vegetarian, glueten free, vegan and completely fantastic. Yeah, I'm still on a soup kick.

I started by hydrating one pound of dried black beans. Did you know dry beans have better flavor and nutritional value than canned beans? Cook's Illustrated told me so. They also told me if I soak my beans overnight they would cause less magical tooting. I forgot to do that part and I'm impatient and didn't want to wait another day for this spectacular soup.

I over cooked the beans, they are splitting open a bit, but that's fine for this recipe. It will make the over all texture thicker.

After the beans were hydrated I rinsed and drained them then added them back to the pot with eight cups of water and a cube of boullion. I threw in a three medium potatoes cubed and an onion chopped.

Then I got a little daring. I bought these dried ancho chili peppers at the local co-op a while back. I love the bulk spices section! This soup has kind of a South Western flavor so I decided to add one of these chilis. I chopped it up and the whole kitchen smelled like Battle's BBQ - the best BBQ in Iowa. I might venture to say the best BBQ I've ever had, which honestly isn't saying very much.

I diced the ancho pepper and stirred it in and let the soup simmer for an hour or so. When making Corn and Black Bean Soup the bare minimum simmer time is until the potato is tender about a half hour. Like many soups the longer you simmer the more rich the flavor.

Then I chopped up some green peppers and defrosted some corn. Here comes the "reduce food waste" part of this post. The green peppers I used, I found in the crisper drawer and let's just say, they were anything but crisp. I cut out all the bad parts. I'm not willing to show you how ugly they were before, so here's a picture of what was left after I cut out all the mushy, yucky bits. I wasted some but not all of the pepper. In the past I might have just thrown the whole pepper away. See how good I am?

The corn is also a step towards my goal. Jeff's grandparents moved from their house to assisted living last year. Grandma Irene kept a huge vegetable garden for many years and dutifully froze or canned her own personal cornucopia. When they decided to sell their house Jeff and I helped clean it out and we came across a full pantry. Irene was a farm wife and like a good farmer's wife she could make it through the winter on her produce alone. We cleaned out the canned goods and donated most of them to an emergency residence shelter and a food bank. Her deep freeze however? I transferred two or three coolers worth to my parent's deep freeze. We have frozen corn, strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb, squash and tomatoes. I stirred in two containers of Grandma Irene's corn into this soup; probably about 4 cups worth of kernels.

Then I tasted the soup. Whoa! That ancho is a spicy baby. I scooped around in the soup pot and dug out all the red pieces of ancho and threw them in the compost in an effort to reduce the heat. I know full well the seeds carry the most heat and they are still in there. We I guess for this batch of corn and bean soup I'll have to add some sour cream or plain yogurt when I serve it. The ancho did add a nice smokey flavor. Next time I won't add a full one, or maybe just take out the seeds. I might even not bother to chop it, so if the flavor gets to be too much I can fish it out more easily.

For the finishing touch I stirred in two teaspoons of cumin. Serve with a dollop of sour cream (or plain yogurt in this case) and a sprinkle of green onion snips or even better cilantro. Now it really is Santa Fe inspired Corn and Black Bean soup.