Delia Smith Black Bean Soup Recipe

Started the night before with a bowl of soaking beans, Delia Smith’s black bean soup simmers for an hour and a half with pancetta, onion, carrot, swede, toasted cumin and Tabasco. Blended dark and smooth, then sharpened with lime, it’s topped with a cold salsa of beans, tomato, red onion, chilli and coriander, enough for 4 to 6 bowls.

Her Winter Collection (1995) has it in the Warming Up soup chapter. She says black beans have little flavour of their own but carry other flavours superbly, which is why the spices and smoky pancetta matter so much here.

In the pulses guide of How to Cook Book Three, she picks them out as shiny, ebony-black good-lookers that make a rich, dark soup. Like her London Particular, it starts with smoked bacon and ends up blended smooth.

The fun is in the contrast. The soup is hot, earthy and gently spiced, while the salsa on top stays cold, sharp with lime and bright with coriander.

Delia Smith’s Black Bean Soup with Black Bean Salsa

Recipe by Anne Morgan

0.0 from 0 votes

Course: SoupsCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

8

hours 

20

minutes

Cooking time

2

hours 

Calories

440

kcal

Dark, smooth and gently spiced, with crème fraîche and a sharp bean salsa on every bowl.

Ingredients

• For the soup:

• 250g (9oz) dried black beans

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 70g (3oz) pancetta or smoked bacon, finely chopped

• 1 large onion, chopped small

• 1 fat clove garlic, crushed

• 50g (2oz) carrot, chopped small

• 50g (2oz) swede, chopped small

• 15g (½oz) fresh coriander, stalks finely chopped, leaves kept for the salsa

• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds

• 1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce

• 1.2 litres (2 pints) chicken stock

• juice of ½ lime

• 1 heaped tablespoon crème fraîche

• salt and freshly milled black pepper

• For the salsa:

• 3 rounded spoonfuls of the cooked beans

• 2 large tomatoes, not too ripe

• 1 small red onion, finely chopped

• 1 green chilli, deseeded and chopped

• the reserved coriander leaves

• 1 dessertspoon extra virgin olive oil

• juice of ½ lime

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Directions

• Soak: The night before, put the beans in a large pan of about 3.5 litres and cover them with roughly twice their volume of cold water. Next day, drain them in a colander and rinse under the cold tap.
• Pancetta: Heat the olive oil in the same pan until really hot and fry the pancetta for about 5 minutes. Turn the heat to medium, stir in the onion, garlic, carrot, swede and coriander stalks, cover and cook for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice.
• Cumin: Meanwhile, toast the cumin seeds in a small dry frying pan over a medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until they darken, smell fragrant and begin to jump. Crush them coarsely in a pestle and mortar.
• Simmer: Add the cumin, drained beans, Tabasco and stock to the vegetables, with no salt yet. Cover and keep at the gentlest simmer for about 1½ hours, using a heat diffuser if your hob runs hot.
• Salsa: About an hour before serving, cover the tomatoes with boiling water for 1 minute, slip off the skins, halve them and squeeze out the seeds, then dice small. Lift out 3 rounded spoonfuls of the cooked beans, rinse and drain them, and mix with the tomato, red onion, chilli, coriander leaves, extra virgin olive oil, the juice of half a lime, salt and pepper. Leave for the flavours to mingle.
• Blend: Purée the soup in a liquidiser, return it to the pan, add the rest of the lime juice and season with salt and pepper.
• Serve: Reheat very gently without letting it boil. Ladle into warm bowls and top each with a spoonful of crème fraîche and an equal share of the salsa.

Notes

• Without a liquidiser, she suggests a food processor followed by a sieve, or even just a sieve.
• Any leftover soup freezes, she says. I'd freeze it without the salsa and make that on the day.

FAQs

I forgot to soak the beans. What now?

Bring them up to the boil for 10 minutes, then leave them to soak. Her Winter Collection gives them 3 hours after that, while The Delia Collection: Soup (2003) and her pulses guide say 2 hours. The guide also gives a measure for an overnight soak: 2.25 litres of cold water for every 225g of beans.

For safety, she notes that some pulses, such as kidney beans, still need a 10-minute fast boil even after soaking. Black beans can stand in for kidney beans in any recipe, she says, so I’d give them that hard boil too, as my own caution.

When should the salt go in?

This recipe keeps it back until after blending, and the 2003 reprint does the same. Her pulses guide takes the other view: she now always salts pulses while they cook, because she finds salt added at the end never seems to soak in properly.

My own compromise here is to add only a little at the start, as the pancetta and stock are already salty, then taste and adjust after blending.

Is there a quicker version?

Yes. Her Mexican black bean soup in Delia’s How to Cheat at Cooking (2008) takes only 20 minutes. It uses a 400g tin of black beans, 4 rashers of smoked pancetta whizzed with a red onion and garlic in a mini-chopper, and just 425ml of stock.

It simmers for 10 minutes before a stick blender goes in, then gets lime juice, coriander leaves and a swirl of half-fat crème fraîche. It serves 2, or 4 as a starter, and she suggests folded tortillas with melted cheese alongside.

What’s the two-soup trick?

It’s her idea for entertaining. Make this soup and her Tuscan white bean soup, reheat both, then pour a ladle of each into the warm bowls at the same time, one from the left and one from the right.

You get a bowl that’s half black and half white, and she says it makes a lovely contrast. Top it with the salsa or another garnish.