Portuguse Black Bean and Sausage Soup

By Gibby

A good complex mix of flavours delivering a belly warming soup, perfect on a cold winter's day!

You can use kielbasa, italian, chorizo, mexican, linguicia cajun, spanish mild or hot links in this recipe depending on your tastes and preferences. The best is a good firm sausage such as kielbasa.

You can of course subsitute canned turtle beans (black beans) that have been drained and rinsed. Add cooked beans to soup pot during last 10 minutes of cooking time.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds dried black turtle beans.
• 3 + 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 red onion, diced
• 4 carrots, diced, sliced, chopped,
• 4 ribs of celery diced
• 5 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
• 2 1/2 tbsp cumin
• 2 tsp dried coriander
• 1 tsp smoky spanish paprika
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 1/2 quart chicken stock.
• 2 pounds of sausages about 1/4 inch thick cut in half.
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper or tbsp of Tabasco

Preparation

Step 1

Rinse turtle beans and place in a large pot with couple of quarts of water. let the beans soak for overnight (at least 10 to 12 hours)

Completely cover the bottom of a large soup pot with the 3 tbsp of olive oil. Add garlic and saute over medium heat for about 2 minutes. Add onions and Saute until the onion soften, about 5 minutes. Remove the onion put aside. Put the rest of vegetables and spices in the pot in the pot until they start to turn soft, add back the softened onions then add the stock and the beans and bring to a boil. Once at the boil reduce the heat and simmer, for about an hour to an hour and a half, stirring occasionally.

In a separate frying pan put 1 tbsp of the oil and bring to medium heat. Add your sliced sausage and cook until slighly browned on both sides. Cover and put aside and keep warm

When Beans are soft, remove 2 cups and about 1/2 cup of soup liquid and process together in a blender. Once pureed pour back into soup pot and mix thoroughly.
Add sauage. Heat through, add salt, fresh ground pepper and chili power to taste