This nutritious pinto bean soup is a great winter warmer of a soup – full of beans – literally, but with loads of texture. I love soups, they’re so nourishing and satisfying and with a piece of wholemeal bread a soup is a meal in itself.
The key is getting the right mix of veg, spices and beans in your recipe. Most beans are almost a complete protein in themselves, but when you add a grain, such as wholemeal bread the amino acids are perfectly balanced.
Sauteeing a few of the veggies like the onions, celery and garlic first, develops the flavours and adds depth. Adding in the extra veggies like carrots and potatoes rounds the flavours out and provides extra nutrition.
I’ve found that blending some of the soup, and addingback in the unblended veggies gives the soup a richness that can otherwise be missing. It works amazingly well with this soup too.
As with all soups, making it in super large quantity saves on work and time. When you want a soup, all you have to do is defrost however many portions you need. My motto is “cook once – eat many times”!
I generally use an 11 litre pan for this kind of soup. When I make it, I eat some that day, and then freeze the rest. That way, I can enjoy this nutritious pinto bean soup any time I feel like it. Soups generally freeze very well, and can just be defrosted and heating in a microwave oven. Then a piece of wholewheat toast finishes it off.
Pinto Bean Soup
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Soak the pinto beans overnight/5 hours, in plenty of filtered water.
- Once soaked, discard the soaking water, rinse and drain beans.
- Add olive oil to an 8-litre stock pot with the chopped onions, crushed garlic, celery and dried rosemary and sauté until softened.
- Add boiling water, pinto beans, chopped tomatoes, stock cubes, stock powder, nutritional yeast, salt and pepper, and bring to boil.
- Simmer for 30 minutes, then add chopped carrots, chopped/cubed potatoes. Bring to the boil and then cover the pot, reduce the heat and leave to simmer for around 45 minutes to an hour until the beans and veggies are soft and cooked. Pay particular attention to the beans which shouldn’t be “crunchy” but nice and smooth to the bite. You may wish to play around with what time you actually add in the veg - if you like firmer veg - put them in a little later.
- The rosemary will tend to concentrate around the edge of the pan, so without disturbing the rosemary, scoop out from the middle - with a ladle - roughly half the veggies and beans leaving the liquid mostly behind.
- Use a stick blender to blend the remaining soup directly in the pot to a fine puree.
- Then once it’s all blended return the removed veggies and beans to the pot.
- Add a little more low sodium salt and pepper if required.
- Eat what you want whilst it's still hot. Then allow the rest to cool, and portion up into 325g lots for the freezer!
Nutrition
Notes
Tried this recipe?
Let us know how it was!Pinto Bean Soup
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Soak the pinto beans overnight/5 hours, in plenty of filtered water.
- Once soaked, discard the soaking water, rinse and drain beans.
- Add olive oil to an 8-litre stock pot with the chopped onions, crushed garlic, celery and dried rosemary and sauté until softened.
- Add boiling water, pinto beans, chopped tomatoes, stock cubes, stock powder, nutritional yeast, salt and pepper, and bring to boil.
- Simmer for 30 minutes, then add chopped carrots, chopped/cubed potatoes. Bring to the boil and then cover the pot, reduce the heat and leave to simmer for around 45 minutes to an hour until the beans and veggies are soft and cooked. Pay particular attention to the beans which shouldn’t be “crunchy” but nice and smooth to the bite. You may wish to play around with what time you actually add in the veg – if you like firmer veg – put them in a little later.
- The rosemary will tend to concentrate around the edge of the pan, so without disturbing the rosemary, scoop out from the middle – with a ladle – roughly half the veggies and beans leaving the liquid mostly behind.
- Use a stick blender to blend the remaining soup directly in the pot to a fine puree.
- Then once it’s all blended return the removed veggies and beans to the pot.
- Add a little more low sodium salt and pepper if required.
- Eat what you want whilst it's still hot. Then allow the rest to cool, and portion up into 325g lots for the freezer!
2 responses
This should be called vegetable soup.
On the basis of what? Because it has some vegetables in it? This is a vegan website, so all the recipes are made with plants! Should I call it plant soup then? No, it’s called pinto bean soup (and it will stay that way) because Pinto beans are the main defining ingredient and they give the soup its protein boost so are worthy of a mention in the name. If I adopted your naming convention, all my soups would be called vegetable or plant soup!