Vegetable Bean Soup

It was pretty chilly in NY this morning, and walking home from church with a wind chill of 26, my husband remarked how nice it would be to have chili for lunch on a day like today. Hmm, I thought, when should I tell him that I had planned to have a pear and goat cheese salad for lunch?? I decided to bag it and try my best to come up with a chili'esque dish, despite the fact that I do not have near the ingredients for chili (mainly the meat!).

As I surveyed my pantry, I discovered that I am low on a lot of the staples, like black beans and corn and crushed tomatoes. I fished out some pinto beans, and diced tomatoes and decided to give a bean and vegetable soup a whirl on the fly. What I ended up with was quite tasty and is totally adaptable to whatever you may have laying around in your pantry.

Vegetable Bean Soup

1 large onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 T canola oil

1 cup frozen "stop light" peppers (or 1 fresh red pepper diced, if you have one)

1 can pinto beans (black beans would have been fabulous for this too)

2 T ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 can diced tomatoes (petite diced would have been even better)

2 cups chicken broth (I used 1 cup chicken stock, from the rotisserie chicken carcass earlier this week, and diluted it with 1 cup water; you could also use vegetable stock)

2-3 T sour cream + 2-3 tsp skim milk, for drizzling over soup 

Heat a large dutch oven over medium-high heat; add oil. Toss in onion and garlic and sautee until onions start to become tender (about 3 minutes). Add in peppers and continue to sautee until tender. Reduce heat to medium. 

Rinse and drain the beans and add to the pot. Add cumin and coriander and stir well until the scent of the spices releases, about 1 minute. Add the diced tomatoes, with juice, and incorporate. Slowly pour in the chicken broth and stir well. Reduce heat to low and simmer about 10-15 minutes. 

Turn off the heat and puree a portion or all of the soup with an immersion blender, depending on how chunky you like it. I ran the immersion blender around the pot a few times to get some of the chunks out, but still had a good hearty mix.

Whisk together the sour cream and skim milk until it is almost runny, then drizzle mixture over each individual bowl of soup. Although I did not have any on hand, crushed up tortilla or corn ships would be great with this!