Quick, Delicious Batch of Pinto Bean Soup
I hope this Quick, Delicious Batch of Pinto Bean Soup is further proof that Mexican soup recipes can be quite forgiving!
I was low on tomatoes, lacking chipotles, and stuck with some generic canned beans….
And it was still dee-licous 🙂
How To Make a Quick Batch of Pinto Bean Soup
Of course, there’s even more leeway when you’re starting with a jar full of goodness like this:
That’s a few cups of this homemade chicken stock.
No, you don’t need to use homemade stock for this Pinto Bean Soup, but at some point please give it a go! Homemade stock is the perfect starting point for your soups and makes them less dependent on exact ingredient lists.
For this Pinto Bean Soup you could use:
This Homemade Chicken Stock
Or This Homemade Vegetable Stock
Normally I would want around 5-6 plum tomatoes for this recipe, but I only had two!
And that’s okay!
I usually plop them in the oven (400F) for 20 minutes or so, but the exact time isn’t crucial so feel free to grab ’em when you need ’em.
In a medium-sized soup pot, cook the onion and garlic in a glug of oil.
I left the garlic cloves whole for this batch knowing that all of this will be blended eventually.
Once the onion is starting to brown you can add the spices:
2 teaspoons Mexican oregano What is Mexican oregano?
1/2 teaspoon cumin (optional)
1 teaspoon salt
freshly cracked black pepper
Stir well to give the spices some direct contact with the heat, and then add the remaining ingredients:
2 cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
4 cups stock
the roasted tomatoes
1-2 chipotles in adobo
Or if you discover that your container of chipotles in the fridge doesn’t have any chipotles, just use the leftover adobo sauce! How to work with chipotles in adobo.
That’s what happened with this batch so I added about 2 tablespoons of the similarly flavored adobo sauce.
Bring this up to temp and then combine well in a blender. Be sure to use caution when blending warm liquids.
Hello Pinto Bean Soup!
Add the soup back to the pot and let it simmer over medium-low heat as you do the final taste testing.
I added another generous pinch of salt to this batch, but the homemade stock I used had zero sodium so you may not need to add as much salt as I did.
I also added another pinch of Mexican oregano and some more adobo sauce.
So yes, I had to fiddle with the final flavor a bit and that’s most likely because I was lacking in tomatoes and had to use the adobo sauce!
But the result was equally good 🙂
I garnished with Crema, cilantro and a few drop of hot sauce. And of course, a final squeeze of lime.
These easy Mexican soup recipes all have similar elements:
the cooked onion-garlic mixture
some stock that you trust
an abundance of the bean or vegetable of your choice
a few key aromatics
proper salt level
Keep those key elements in mind and you’ll find that you can stray quite far from the written recipe and still end up with delicious results.
I hope this Quick, Delicious Batch of Pinto Bean Soup gives you permission to make some soul-warming soup the next time you’re craving it. Even if you find yourself missing an ingredient or two 🙂
Enjoy!
Want to see the latest recipe? It’s this Vegetarian Tortilla Soup:
