Guatemalan Black Bean Soup

Serves: ~4

Ingredients

• 1 [14oz] can diced tomatoes (or use concassé & chopped fresh when they look good)
• 2 [14oz] can black beans drained
• 1 [14oz] can black refried beans
• ~1 bottle cerveza (beer)
• 1-2 chipotle peppers, minced (dried or in Adobo sauce)
• 1 sm/med yellow onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 red bell pepper, diced (seeds & stem removed)
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 bunch cilantro leaves chopped
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 0.5 tsp smoked paprika
• 4 eggs, fried easy (optional for plated bowls only)
• Juice of one lime
• Olive oil¹
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions

1. Sauté onions in olive oil for a couple of minutes until the onions are translucent. Add cumin, chipotle peppers and Sauté 1 minute.
2. Add bell peppers, carrots and celery and saute for a couple of minutes until the vegetables start to soften.
3. Add beer and bay leaves and garlic. Salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil.
4. Add the tomatoes and beans and bring to a boil again. Reduce heat and simmer for at least ½ hour, preferably longer, and add additional seasoning to taste.
5. During the last 5 minutes of simmering add a few TBS of the cilantro, and fry the eggs sunny side up (over medium). You can also add some Mexican crema to the plated bowl (or sour cream if you don’t have crema)

To serve with egg: place soup in a large bowl. Squeeze some lime juice over soup. Cover with one fried egg and garnish with chopped cilantro and thin avocado slices.

This will blow your fucking mind.

Variants

1. Alternate method: render .25lb bacon in stock pot first. remove bacon and leave the fat, then proceed with the rest of the dish, garnished with chopped bacon when plated.
2. Alternate method: brown a ham hock in the pot first, remove and use rendered fat to proceed. then add ham hock back in for 2 hours on low or until meat falls away from the bone and marrow is removed easily. This method works better with dry beans.