Black Bean Chorizo Soup

For a soup party at the Gates’ house I made a black bean chorizo soup. I wanted to make this because of a soup I had at The Drover, and I loved it.

I didn’t find an exact recipe to use, but I found one I thought would be a good starting point and went from there.

Here is the version I made, and at the end I’ll add some comments about what I will be trying next time.

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 (4-ounce) fresh, raw Mexican Chorizo
• 1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 dried Chile de árbol, seeded
• 1 dried Poblano chile (chile ancho), seeded
• 3 (15-ounce) cans black beans
• 1 canned chipotle chile, diced
• 1 quart chicken broth
• 1/2 tablespoon ground cumin
• Grated sharp cheddar cheese, for serving
• Sliced green onions, for serving

Make a few small cuts in the chorizo with a knife. Place in your soup pot over high heat in 1/2 an inch of water.

Bring to a boil, then cover with a lid and lower head to medium-low. When sausages are firm (about 10 minutes) uncover and raise the heat to medium.

While they are boiling, place the chile de árbol and chile ancho in a food processor and break them up. They don’t have to turn to powder, but you don’t want any large chunks.

Let the water boil off, then brown the sausages a bit in their own oil. Remove the sausages and set aside.

Pour in a very little water, maybe a 1/4 of a cup to deglaze the pan, then add the olive oil. Turn the heat up to medium-high and add the garlic, ground up dried peppers, and half of the onions.

Saute until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. At the same time, cut your chorizo into 1/2″ slices, then halve those slices and add to the onions as you go.

Add the black beans, diced chipotle pepper and broth. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Blend half the soup as smooth as you can, then stir in the other half of the onions and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Dish it up, top with the cheddar and sliced green onions.

What I will do differently next time.

For texture, it came out thinner than I envisioned, so I would cut the chicken stock in half and replace it with equivalent puréed black beans. I might also consider adding some heavy cream to it, but I’m not sure.

I don’t think I would add the canned chipotle chile next time. I’m not sure that flavor was right for where I wanted to go with the soup.

Also, I might only use half of a chile de árbol, since it came out pretty spicy and Darcy can’t handle the heat.

Pickles

This year we planted mini-cucumbers, and got quite a few off the vine already. I decided to pickle some. For my first batch I used this recipe by Alton Brown. I didn’t have fresh dill, I used sea salt, and I don’t think my water was fully de-chlorinated, so they came out tasting way too garlicy, weird and inedible.

On the second try I modified it a bit, found pickling salt and used store-bought distilled water. They turned out much better, though not perfect. I think my flaw is not having fresh dill, and I was afraid of the garlic on the second go round, so I think I under did that too.

• 5.5 ounces pickling salt (just under 1/2 cup)
• 0.75 gallon CHLORINE FREE water
• Pickling cukes (supposed to be 3 lbs, didn’t weigh mine, I had 6 medium)
• 1/2 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1/2 tbsp red pepper flakes
• 1 clove garlic, crushed (I would go with 2 next time)
• 1 tsp dill seed
• 2 tsp dried dill weed (I’ll try fresh next time, otherwise I would make this 3 to 4 tsp dried)
• 1/2 tsp coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds

I’m not sure the coriander or mustard seeds added much flavor, I didn’t add much and they were overpowered by the peppers. Next time I’ll up the mustard and drop the coriander, I think.

You dissolve the salt in the water, put the aromatics on the bottom of the crock, place the cucumbers on top, and pour in most of the water. Then place the rest of the water in a gallon bag on top of the cucumbers to hold them down. Wait three days and then skim off the scum daily as needed for another 3-5 days. Eat.