chipotle sweet potato soup

My friend Read W passed this recipe along. Of course, we used extra garlic, ginger, and chipotle peppers. The hardest part was waiting for the proto-soup to cool enough so that we could put it through the blender. We don't have one of those modern stick blender thingies.

1 medium onion, chopped
olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
3 cloves garlic (we used five)
1 tsp dried ginger (we used fresh)
3 very large sweet potatoes, the redder the better, peeled and diced
1 canned chipotle, minced, with adobo (happened to have a can; we used two peppers)
vegetable stock to just cover
1 cup or so milk/soy milk [edit: a can of coconut milk is really good (which is what we used)]tamari to taste
1 large (approx 22 oz) can black beans, rinsed (we used a 15 oz can)

Saute the onion in the olive oil with the salt over medium-low heat till well softened. Add the garlic and ginger, and saute a few minutes more. Add the sweet potatoes, chipotle, and vegetable stock. Simmer, partially covered, till the potatoes are very tender. Puree (a stick blender is easiest) and add milk to thin as you like. Taste for salt/tamari & heat (you can finely mince more chipotle or just use the adobo if you want more heat). Stir in the black beans and heat through.

The extra canned chipotles: I [Read; I did this too] put individual chipotles on plastic wrap and spoon their adobo over, and then freeze hard. Once they're frozen I wrap them tightly in plastic wrap and store in the freezer.


It was delicious. We served it with some fancy multigrain chips and a small side salad.