Creamy Black Bean Chicken Soup

This soup is quite similar to the Slow Cooker Enchilada Soup that I posted about a few weeks ago (about which I’ve gotten great reviews – thanks, guys!), but it’s just different enough and just good enough that it’s worth sharing, too! We had this at Happy Hour last night and my Crockpot was scraped empty. A bonus is that it’s super easy and fast to throw together, especially if you use canned black beans.

I actually soaked my beans overnight and cooked them in the slow-cooker for a few hours in the morning before draining and adding the rest of the ingredients to the crockpot (soaking beans for 12-24 hours in water and lemon juice — about 1 T per cup of dry beans — helps with digestability and your body’s ability to absorb the nutritional content of the beans). If you’re out of your house all day, you could probably throw the soaked beans into the crockpot with other ingredients and about 2 cups of extra liquid. This soup would probably be extremely forgiving, as long as your beans and chicken are cooked, so feel free to throw it all in on high 3 hours before dinner or on low 9 hours beforehand… either way, I hope your family scrapes the bowl dry!

Creamy Black Bean Chicken Soup in the Slow-Cooker

(Recipe based on Pass the Fresh)

2 chicken breasts (frozen or thawed both work) 1 cup chicken broth (I used 1.5 c water and 1 t “Better than Bouillon”) 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed OR 1 cup dry black beans, soaked overnight and slightly pre-cooked 1 1/2 cup frozen corn 1 cup salsa (I used our family standard, Pioneer Woman’s recipe) 1 1/2 Tablespoons taco seasoning (make your own! Mine included smoked paprika, which added a great smoky flavor to the soup) 1/2 block (4 oz) cream cheese (the original recipe calls for sour cream and cheese, but I like the texture of cream cheese in soup, AND that’s what I had on hand)

Throw everything except the cream cheese into the slow cooker and cook on low 6-8 hours or on high 3-4 hours. In the last hour, remove and shred the chicken and add back in. Also, add the cream cheese in chunks and stir occasionally to make sure it is stirred in thoroughly. I served this with cilantro, diced jalapenos and tortilla chips, but you could also serve it with more sour cream, shredded cheese and diced fresh tomatoes. Yum!

#beans #chicken #crockpot #mexican #creambased

Sweet Potato and Lentil Chili

For our inaugural Happy Hour of the school year, I made this Sweet Potato and Lentil Chili. Honestly, I was looking for a recipe that would be cheap and low-maintenance, since I figured we’d be serving a bit of a crowd (I think we had 19 adults and a little under 10 kids show up). In terms of foods that are filling, cheap and healthy, you can’t go wrong with sweet potatoes and lentils (unless you’re paleo, but then you’re also not going to put sour cream and cheese on top of the finished recipe, and you also shouldn’t be complaining about free food and drinks at somebody else’s house. Fortunately for me, nobody complains… to me, anyway).

In fact, a lot of people really loved this soup! I liked it better the next day, but something might have been wrong with my tastebuds that day because I also thought my salsa (same recipe every week for 2+ years now) tasted funky and everyone else thought it was fine. In retrospect, I’d call it a win on all fronts.

(Also, if you are tripling the recipe like I did, feel free to use your food processor liberally in food prep. I had 6 bell peppers, 3 large onions and 9 sweet potatoes to dice. First of all, if you’re not cutting an onion like this, you are wasting a lot of time and you should give it a try. Secondly, I used the “slicer” attachment on my food processor for the bell peppers and the blade for the sweet potatoes — after I peeled them and cut them into large chunks, I filled the food processor bowl about 1/3 full and pulsed it until I got my desired texture, which was a lot of pieces the side of my onion chunks, some that were smaller, and a few large chunks. I still spent about an hour in front of the food processor but if I’d been doing it by hand, it would have taken me all day.)

Sweet Potato and Lentil Chili (original recipe here)

2 Tablespoons olive oil 1 onion, diced 2 bell peppers (any color), diced 3 medium sweet potatoes, diced 3 cloves garlic, minced 4 c vegetable broth (this makes the recipe vegan; I used beef “better than bouillon”) 1 15-oz can diced tomatoes with chiles (Ro-tel cans are 11 oz; I try to used canned tomatoes that are BPA free, Muir Glen organics is the brand I can get easily in Billings) 1 c lentils, rinsed 2 Tablespoons chili powder 1 Tablespoon cumin 1 Tablespoon paprika 1/4 teaspoon cayenne (optional) 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce salt & pepper, to taste

In a large pot, saute onion and bell peppers in olive oil until they are tender. Add garlic and sweet potatoes and saute until garlic is soft. Add everything except the lentils, bring to a boil and simmer until the sweet potatoes are tender (at least half an hour). Add lentils and cook until they are soft (another 20 min or so). It’s okay to cook longer – lentils don’t tend to get too mushy easily.

Serve with sour cream, shredded cheese, tortilla chips, cilantro, extra hot sauce and other garnishes of choice!

Slow Cooker Enchilada Chicken Soup

You guys, it’s soup season again! And in Billings, the temperatures are dropping so quickly, I just want to drop everything and make soup! Soup, soup, soup, soup, soup.

I kicked off soup season (can I say “Soup-tember” without sounding overly cheesy?) with this one that’s been on my Pinterest board for a while: Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Soup. Everyone in the family liked it, especially the kids when we added even more cheese and sour cream to the top of their bowls. I had leftovers for lunch a few times; I just love making a big pot of soup and eating off of it for the rest of the week. My kids don’t know any better yet, either.

Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Soup (original recipe here)

In your slow cooker, combine:

1 large yellow onion, diced 1 bell pepper, diced (green, yellow or red – I used a handful of baby bells) 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 cup shredded carrots (not in the original recipe, but a great way to get some extra veggies into your diet) 1 can Ro-tel or other canned tomatoes with chiles 4 c chicken broth/stock 1 1/4 lbs raw chicken breasts OR leftover cooked chicken already in chunks (if you cook your soup long enough, you can just plop the breasts in frozen) 2 c frozen corn 1 can black beans (optional) 1 Tablespoon chili powder 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 teaspoon oregano

Cook on high 3-4 hours or on low 5-6 hours. When the chicken is cooked, take it out and shred it with forks and add back to the soup.

Add:

1 1/2 c shredded cheddar cheese 1 c sour cream 1 Tablespoon cornstarch (this is optional, but I added it so the soup would taste thicker and creamier. Use a small ladle to pull out some of the broth, whisk the cornstarch in and then stir it all into the soup.

Cook for another hour (leave the lid off if you want it to thicken up even more!). Serve with more shredded cheese, sour cream, avocado slices and tortilla chips.