Vegan Creamy Black Bean Soup
By: Kelly Eckert
Published: Friday, January 29, 2010 - 6:28pm

Ingredients




1 pound dry black beans
1 cup raw cashews
1 onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 large carrots, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, finely chopped
1 large banana, finely chopped
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1/2 cup dry vermouth or dry white wine
6 cups vegetable broth
1 teaspoon chipotle powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
juice from 2 limes

salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1 The night before preparing this soup, rinse, pick through black beans and soak in cold water overnight. 2 Also the night before, place raw cashews in cold water and soak overnight in the refrigerator. 3 Start making the soup about 3 hours before you want to serve it. 4 Heat oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. 5 Sauté onions for 5 minutes. 6 Add the garlic and sauté a few minutes, until you can smell the garlic emanating from the pot. 7 Add the vermouth and cook for a couple of minutes. 8 Add the carrots, celery, bell pepper and banana. Stir well and cook for 10 minutes. 9 Drain the beans and add them along with the vegetable broth to the soup pot. 10 Stir in chipotle powder, coriander and cumin. 11 Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 2 hours, checking and stirring occasionally. 12 In the meantime, drain and rinse the cashews. 13 Place cashews in a blender with just enough cold water to cover them. 14 Blend cashews on high for several minutes, until cashew cream is smooth, and set aside. 15 After cooking the soup for 2 hours, remove from heat and stir in the cashew cream. 16 Use a hand blender to process the soup ever so briefly. 17 Stir in the lime juice. 18 Add salt and pepper to taste.

About


I'm normally a canned beans kinda girl. They're just so easy, especially if you don't want to have to plan your dinner a day or two in advance. But I'm getting away from canned items as much as possible now, so for this soup I used dried beans.
I started soaking them the night before I wanted to make the soup. The beans soaked a good 16 hours or so. They were still really firm after that time, and, even after simmering in the soup for an hour, they were still not overly soft. I think if I had wanted to use them for a bean salad, I could have soaked them overnight then simmered them for about an hour and ended up with beans that were soft enough for salad without being squishy.
So, these beans in the soup, after simmering for something like two hours, ended up delightfully squishy. For a creamy soup, I think squishy beans are best. Alright, maybe not exactly squishy. Squishable, then. You're going to use a hand blender in the soup briefly at the end. I find it produces the results I want better than using a potato or bean masher. I leave the soup rather chunky -- with clear bites of beans and veggies -- but I want it mostly to be creamy. Sort of. I want it to be clearly a soup, not just a bowl of beans. How's that?
I serve the soup with some rice (I like brown, the kids like basmati). But, you know, you don't have to worry about the whole "complete protein" thing, if you're vegetarian/vegan. Remember when the books and nutritionists would tell you that you had to combine rice and beans (i.e., grain and legumes) in the same meal in order to get a complete protein (a protein containing all the "essential" amino acids that our bodies don't make on their own)?
Turns out you can forget it. You just need a variety of foods over the course of the day, not necessarily in every meal. So you can have your oatmeal in the morning and your beans at lunch or dinner and be good.