Cuban Black Bean Soup - (Cooking Light Magazine, Jan/Feb 2008, p93)

TASTE: OK
PREP: Average
REPEAT: Probably not

Well, I love black beans and I am trying to find a variety of ways to use them. Good for you and cheap too. I want to find out how to prepare recipes, prepare them well, with dried beans. Let's just say I still have a way to go. :) The beans I used might have been too old because they never did soften enough. However, I have never had success with any method of soaking beans in the past anyway.

For this, I followed the recipe from Cooking Light. It did not suggest soaking the beans so I didn't. In fact, it used the water that the beans cooked in for the soup. IF I tried it again, I would soak overnight first with fresher dried beans then still prepare as suggested. I would also put the ham into the soup rather than as a topping. Some things are better put on fresh, like the chopped cilantro and the sour cream, others, like the ham and even the jalepeno pepper, could provide more flavor to the soup by adding them at least toward the end. I never added pumpkin seeds as in the recipe. Didn't have them and I had no desire to try and find them for this. Glad I didn't. Finally, the mixture of onions, shallots and peppers smelled great when they were cooked, but when I pureed them and put them back in the soup they seem to have lost their potency.