Black Bean and Rice Soup

This weekend was really busy for us, so we had almost no time at home. Saturday I needed to go for a dress fitting, then we met our parents for dinner at Bertucci's and watched our wedding video for the first time. After that, we headed to the bar to meet some friends to watch the Phillies game (it didn't end until 1:30am!!!).  On Sunday we had tickets to the Eagles game, so we spent the day at Lincoln Financial Field.  We didn't get home until 6:30 and had almost nothing in the apartment. The theme for the dinner became "cook whatever is in the pantry", and we ended up with this.

Black Bean and Rice Soup

original recipe

Ingredients:

2 cans (15 oz.) black beans, drained

1 can (15 oz.) chicken broth

1 can (15 oz.) diced tomatoes

1 cup jasmine rice

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, sliced

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 bay leaf

1 sprig rosemary

Directions:

Add enough olive oil to a pan to coat it.  Once smoking, saute garlic and onion about 5 min, until soft.  Add beans, tomatoes, and chicken broth to pan. Fill the chicken broth can with water and add to soup. Add spices, bay leaf and rosemary.  Bring to a boil and simmer for about an hour.  

When the soup has been simmering for about 35 min, cook the rice. Bring two cups of water to a boil and add rice. Let simmer for 20 minutes. Remove the rice and soup from the heat.  Let the rice sit for 5 minutes then add to the soup.

Before serving, remove bay leaf. 

Review:

This recipe was pretty good for my first "on the fly" attempt at something. Next time I will use two cans of chicken broth in lieu of the water, but all we had was the one can on hand tonight. If you like it spicy, you may also want to kick up the chili powder a little. This was on the milk side.