Black Bean Soup = Easy + Delicious

I made some awesome soup for dinner last night, and you must try it. It only has 5 main ingredients! Plus a few toppings, if you want.

Photo originally from Real Simple

I saw it in Real Simple magazine back in the day (2006) and kept the recipe. It takes less than a half hour and is one of the easiest things I've ever made.

Ingredients
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 pint store-bought fresh salsa (pico de gallo)
1 16-ounce can refried black beans
1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed
1 14.5 ounce can vegetable or chicken broth
1/2 cup sour cream (optional)
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped (optional)

Directions
1. Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add 1 1/2 cups of salsa and cook, stirring occasionally, for 4 minutes.
2. Add the refried beans, black beans, and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Divide among bowls. Top with sour cream, cilantro, and remaining salsa.

Let's talk about how easy that is. You cannot complain because you do not even have to do any chopping, which is, in my opinion, the worst part of cooking. It's just opening up containers, dumping them in a pan and heating stuff up. Very hard to mess up.

I did make one modification. Since Chris is not a vegetable fan, and he certainly won't eat tomato chunks, I pureed the salsa in my mini-blender first so that they were too small to notice. Sneaky, I know.

Let's also note that this is a fairly healthy meal. Which is why we went to Baker's Square to get pie for dessert. Mmmm pie.

Try it!