Recipes

Leftover Sweet Potato and Black Bean Stew

In honor of our #foodwastebingo challenge for 2019, all month long, we’ll be sharing recipes that help you live your best life. Week one is all about buying less and one of our favorite ways to embrace this is to make creative soups and stews with the ingredients that we already have around. Our friend Emily of Resplendent Kitchen recently shared this hearty black bean soup recipe with us that stars ingredients that you likely already have in your fridge and pantry.

recipe and photo by Emily Miller of Resplendent Kitchen!

Ingredients

2 Tbsp of your favorite vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 sweet potatoes unpeeled, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 tsp sea salt, divided in half
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
4 c low-salt vegetable broth
3 green onions, chopped for garnish
2 15 oz cans of black beans or pinto beans, rinsed and drained
1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes with liquid

Instructions

Put a heavy bottomed large saucepan on medium heat. Add the oil, then place onions in the pan, and sautée for several minutes, stirring frequently.
When onions start turning color to light brown, add 1 tsp salt. If your onions start sticking add a Tbsp of water. Continue stirring for several minutes and onions will start to sweat. At this point add garlic and sautée for another minute.
Stir in chopped red bell pepper, sweet potato, remaining 1 tsp sea salt, oregano, cumin, chili powder, and black pepper.
After stirring for a couple of minutes, add 4 c of vegetable broth and your can of diced tomatoes with the liquid. Keep the heat on medium until stew is simmering for approximately 10 minutes. Check the sweet potato for doneness by placing the sharp tip of a knife or fork into a piece of sweet potato. You should be able to pierce the middle of the sweet potato piece easily. If not, simmer it a bit longer.
Add 3 c of cooked or canned beans and cook on medium heat for an additional 5 minutes.
Serve your black bean soup with chopped green onion or parsley on top. Can be served alongside bread or with rice, if you like.

Recipe Notes and Variations

This sweet potato stew packs a nutritional punch and is something you can make in bulk on a Saturday or a Sunday. Feel free to add any additional prepared vegetables you have, to the stew.
If you are not in a hurry, you can cook the beans on the stovetop after soaking them overnight, or in a pressure cooker. Alternatively, you can use canned beans to save time. Do what works best for you!
Any leftover beans can be frozen or used to make this Clean-Out-Your-Fridge Vegetarian Chili, or Roasted Vegetable Nachos.

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Use our storage guide to waste less food and enjoy cooking more.

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Carla

4 years ago

Great recipes, easy to get to but could you add a printer friendly version too? Thx.

Imperfect Foods

4 years ago

Reply to Carla

Thanks a ton for the love! We appreciate the suggestion and have passed it along. For now, we’d recommend copying the recipe into a word document to easily print in the meantime!

Colleen Coughlin

3 years ago

To save these recipes, you can also go to File in the browser tool bar, click on Print and in the window that opens, click on More Settings, scroll down to Open PDF in Preview – you can then save that Preview to your computer.

Peeling ponderings

2 years ago

I’m intrigued with the unpeeled asleep potatoes? Unless I read it wrong or missed it, what happened to the peelings? Do they stay in the soup? Can’t wait to try this recipe!