This hearty and delicious Black Bean Soup is a quick and easy dinner recipe made from canned black beans, pasta, bacon, and vegetables. It is perfect for taking care of leftovers, and you can easily adapt it to make it vegetarian!
Why You’ll Love This Soup
- Quick and easy: Make this soup dish in less than 30 minutes with ingredients you may already have in your pasta such as canned beans, pasta, broth, and vegetables.
- Comforting: It is perfect for cold days in the Fall and Winter.
- Budget-friendly: All the ingredients are affordable and you can use leftovers to make this dish.
- Nutritious: It is rich in fiber (from the beans and vegetables) and high-protein. It is also dairy-free, low-carb (not keto), and can be gluten-free.
Black Bean Soup Recipe
Fall has arrived in Texas now, with temperatures getting lower and lower. Along with the cool weather comes the need for some warm, comforting dishes, including this quick and hearty Black Bean, Pasta, Bacon, and Vegetable Soup — which I call Brazilian Black Bean Soup. If you have ever tasted a classic minestrone, I know you will become a fan of our soup.
Minestrone means “a big soup”… or a thick vegetable soup of Italian origin made with beans, pasta, or rice, and lots of vegetables such as onions, celery, carrots, and tomatoes. Sometimes it may contain pancetta.
Ours contains the same ingredients but with a few variations. White beans have been replaced by black beans, a popular ingredient in Brazilian cuisine… and I have also added bacon to the soup (just as one would find in a feijoada).
Although this type of soup is known as ‘sopa de feijão com macarrão e verduras’ (black bean soup with pasta and vegetables), it is actually a variant of the Italian minestrone — well, at least this particular version of black bean soup.
I can only imagine that this must be due to the influence of Italian immigration in Southern Brazil.
I remember my mother used to make hers by pureeing either pinto bean or black bean leftovers in the blender and then cooking them with angel hair pasta — and oh how I used to love its comforting flavor.
But there is more than one version of black bean soup in Brazil. Most of them are made with pinto beans or black beans (pureed or not), a pasta of one’s choice, and other optional ingredients such as bacon, beef, or sausage, and a variety of different vegetables.
Ours is more similar to the Southern Brazilian version.
Ingredients and Substitutions
To make this black bean soup recipe you will need:
- 5 strips of thick smoked bacon, chopped (omit it for a vegetarian or vegan version, and use about 2 tablespoons of olive oil to sautee the veggies)
- ½ large yellow onion, chopped ( or use white onion)
- ⅓ cup diced carrots (if using baby carrots, simply slice them into rounds)
- ⅓ cup diced celery
- 30-ounce can of black beans, or homemade black bean leftovers (or 2 cans of 15 ounces each)
- 4 cups beef stock (or vegetable stock for a vegetarian recipe)
- 1 cup canned diced tomatoes, and their juice
- Salt and pepper to taste (you may add a pinch of ground cumin if you want)
- 1 cup mezzi rigatoni pasta, or any other small pasta of your choice such as macaroni or pasta shells
- 1 bay leaf
- Chopped cilantro or parsley (or green onions)
How to Make Black Bean Soup
- In a medium to large non-stick saucepan, cook the chopped bacon over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the onions and sweat them for about 3 to 5 minutes in the bacon fat.
- Then, add the carrots and celery and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 5 minutes.
- Add the beans, beef stock, tomatoes and their juice, salt and pepper to taste, pasta, and bay leaf.
- Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; then cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for about 10 to 12 minutes (or until pasta is cooked). Remove the bay leaf and adjust the salt and pepper if necessary. Serve hot, sprinkled with chopped cilantro/parsley (if desired), and serve with bread. Enjoy!
What to serve with
There are several options to serve this black bean soup with such as a hearty bread or a light green salad. Here are a few:
NOTE: You may serve it with some grated parmesan cheese on top of the soup. However, this dish, unlike other black bean soups, doesn’t call for sour cream, Greek yogurt, pico de gallo, tortilla chips, pickled red onions, or lime wedges as toppings.
Variations
- Vegetarian or vegan: Omit bacon and add 2 Tablespoons of olive oil to the recipe in order to sauté vegetables. In addition, use vegetable broth instead. If desired, other vegetables can be added to this soup such as ⅓ cup of chopped bell pepper, potatoes, pumpkin, or butternut squash.
- Spicy: To make a spicy black bean soup, add some red pepper flakes or ground cayenne pepper to your soup.
- Pasta: You may use any type of short pasta you want and adjust the soup cooking time to it. Some options are macaroni, pasta shell, and fusilli.
- Meat: You may replace bacon with any ground meat, or ground sausage.
- Vegetables: Use any type of veggie you can saute or you have at home. For a thicker broth, use some that can thicken the soup such as pumpkin and potatoes.
- Beans: If you are not a fan of black beans, or have another type in your pantry, you can use them to make this soup instead.
FAQ’s
No! Classic Minestrone is an Italian thick vegetable soup that also includes pasta and/or rice, white beans, onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes, leaf vegetables, stock, and parmesan cheese. It can contain meat too! Pasta e Fagioli On the other hand, this black bean soup is made with black beans, pasta, vegetables, and bacon — basically an adapted version of a minestrone with a Brazilian twist.
Yes! You can easily add some spiciness to this black bean soup by mixing in hot sauce, cayenne pepper, or red pepper flakes. To keep it more Brazilian, malagueta peppers would be your pick!
No! Cuban black bean soup contains black beans, a few vegetables, spices, and sometimes chorizo. On the other hand, Brazilian black bean soup contains more vegetables and also bacon and pasta.
Yes! Simply omit the bacon and use a vegetable broth, and you’ll have a delicious vegetarian black bean soup.
How to Store
- FRIDGE: Store our black bean soup in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. You may have to add just enough broth to the soup before reheating. The pasta tends to absorb most of the soup broth during storage time.
- FREEZER: You can store it for about 1 month.
- THAWING: Defrost the soup in the fridge overnight.
- REHEATING: Reheat, covered, in a microwave-safe bowl until hot. Or, heat it in a pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally.
Other Black Bean Recipes
Other Soup recipes
PIN AND ENJOY!
The Best Black Bean Soup
This hearty and delicious Black Bean Soup is a quick and easy dinner recipe made from canned black beans, pasta, bacon, and vegetables. It is perfect for taking care of leftovers, and you can easily adapt it to make it vegetarian!
Servings 6 people
Calories277.6 kcal
Cost $ 0.75 per person
Ingredients
- 5 strips of thick smoked bacon chopped (omit it for a vegetarian or vegan version, and use about 2 tablespoons of olive oil to sautee the veggies)
- ½ large yellow onion chopped ( or use white onion)
- ⅓ cup diced carrots if using baby carrots, simply slice them into rounds
- ⅓ cup diced celery
- 30 ounce can of black beans or homemade black bean leftovers (or 2 cans of 15 ounces each)
- 4 cups beef stock or vegetable stock for a vegetarian recipe
- 1 cup canned diced tomatoes and their juice
- Salt and pepper to taste You may add a pinch of ground cumin if you want, and also red pepper flakes or hot ssauce to make it spicy.
- 1 cup mezzi rigatoni pasta or any other small pasta of your choice such as macaroni or pasta shells. For making it gluten-free use gluten-free pasta and for making it low-carb, use low-carb pasta.
- 1 bay leaf
- Chopped cilantro or parsley or green onions
Instructions
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Cook the bacon: In a medium to large non-stick saucepan, cook the chopped bacon over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the onions and sweat them for about 3 to 5 minutes in the bacon fat.
-
Sauté the veggies: Add the onions and sweat them for about 3 to 5 minutes in the bacon fat. Add the carrots and celery and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 5 minutes.
-
Add the other ingredients: Add the beans, beef stock, tomatoes and their juice, salt, and pepper to taste, pasta, and bay leaf.
-
Simmer: Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; then cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer for about 10 to 12 minutes (or until pasta is cooked). Remove the bay leaf and adjust the salt and pepper if necessary. Serve hot, sprinkled with chopped cilantro/parsley, and serve with bread. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
How to Store
- FRIDGE: Store our black bean soup in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. You may have to add just enough broth to the soup before reheating. The pasta tends to absorb most of the soup broth during storage time.
- FREEZER: You can store it for about 1 month.
- THAWING: Defrost the soup in the fridge overnight.
- REHEATING: Reheat, covered, in a microwave-safe bowl until hot. Or, heat it in a pot over medium heat, stirring occasionally.
Nutrition
Calories: 277.6kcal | Carbohydrates: 36.4g | Protein: 15.8g | Fat: 8.1g | Saturated Fat: 2.6g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1.5g | Monounsaturated Fat: 3.3g | Trans Fat: 0.02g | Cholesterol: 12.1mg | Sodium: 1050mg | Potassium: 917.2mg | Fiber: 11g | Sugar: 2.9g | Vitamin A: 1273.6IU | Vitamin C: 8.8mg | Calcium: 84.7mg | Iron: 3.8mg
** Nutrition labels on easyanddelish.com are for educational purposes only. This info is provided as a courtesy and is only an estimate, since the nutrition content of recipes can vary based on ingredient brand or source, portion sizes, recipe changes/variations, and other factors. We suggest making your own calculations using your preferred calculator, based on which ingredients you use, or consulting with a registered dietitian to determine nutritional values more precisely.
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This post was first published on October 19, 2015.
