Tropical Coconut Black Bean Soup

I was leery, because I don’t usually like coconut based soups. I love coconut in my food in general, just not in soup. I added jerk seasoning, and a few shakes of cumin, and a dash of chili powder. It was bland until I did that. Now it is perfect! I pureed everything with my immersion blender. I wish that I had left more chunks, and saved the peas until after. I would also reccomend a tiny bit less peas. They are a little over powering. Over all this is a fantastic recipe.

A nice base recipe but rather bland as written. I added cumin, red chili powder, and some cinnamon. I cut the amount of peas in half because I wanted to enjoy the coconut flavor, which I brought out even more by sprinkling each bowl with some shredded, unsweetened coconut. Nice recipe to start with, but be sure to add some spices.

This is possibly the worst recipe I have tried so far on Allrecipes.com. If I could give it zero stars, I would. The peas completely overpowered the rest of the flavors, including the coconut milk. I could not doctor it up to make it better. No one liked it in my house and we are not picky eaters and love trying new foods. Next time I try to make a “tropical” black bean soup I will definitely leave out the peas. I have heard of adding plantains, which sounds much better. Those might overpower the coconut, but they would be much better than peas!

After reading the reviews, I fried up some chopped sweet onion, minced garlic, chopped carrot in coconut oil, added cumin, cajun seasoning, pinch of pepper flakes; instead of water I used the water that the dry beans had been cooked in and added chicken bouillon paste (Better Than Bouillon), added juice of one lime and pureed only 1/2 the batch. Served with sprinkle of dried cilantro leaves but would use fresh if on hand. Delicious!

Freakin’ yummy. I cooked my own beans at home and threw in a little chili powder and cumin. I also used vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. Really, really good.

Because I made my own coconut milk, with the coconut, I had plenty of flavor. I cooked the dried black beans and added spices, peas and more water. This is a great soup!

This was pretty good, but I agree with other revieiwers – it’s all about the spices. I used leftover black beans that I had cooked from dry, and they were pretty spicy, so the soup had a lot of flavor. I could tell that it would have been bland if I had used a plain can of beans (not exactly sure what mexican-seasoned ones are, I’ve never bought those). Thanks for the simple recipe, it made a great lunch for us!

We have a vegan in the house so we substituted vegetable broth for the chicken. Also substituted corn for the peas (added them at the end so they weren’t pureed). We prefer our soup a little thicker so we added two cans. Delicious!

I didnt have peas (and dont like them) so instead I used about 1/4 c of roasted red peppers (from a jar), which was delicious! The next time I tried it with sauteed onion and red peppers, and that was pretty good too.

Thank you for sharing this recipe, however, my family didn’t care for this soup at all.

Very good! I think next time I’ll use a regular can of coconut milk (not enough of a hint in this one) a little more lime and add some avocado. I followed other’s advice and pureed half of the soup then added more black beans, peas and a can of corn. The suggestion about the spices were helpful too as I couldn’t find “Mexican-seasoned” beans. This one’s going into rotation around here. Very good too with the banana chips on top, makes the whole soup that much better! YUMM! Thanks for sharing this recipe.

This was pretty bland. It would be fine as the base.

DH is raving over this as I write this review. Made it for supper and he is eating it right now. Super simple and had all the ingredients on hand. I had just made some homemade pork stock from ham hocks so used that and added in a few pieces of the ham hocks for texture. Pureed half as suggested. I also only used one cup of the coconut milk. Used 1/2 tsp of each … cumin, cayenne pepper, cajun seasoning, garlic powder and chili powder. Thanks for sharing an easy, inexpensive, delicious recipe.

This was so tasty, I didn’t have frozen peas, but I did have frozen corn so I used that and blended and it was wonderful!

I’ve no clue what Mexican-seasoned black beans are, so I used regular canned black beans, and added some ground cumin, garlic, and a pinch of chipotle powder. Because I like my soups quite chunky, I pureed half of it, then mixed it together again. I admit I was a bit skeptical (coconut milk and peas?!), but it was actually pretty good. Thanks!

This is a delightful soup and very easy to make! I found this recipe while looking for an idea of what to make with some excess black beans (from dry) I had made for some empanadas. I do agree with the other reviews that it is best used as a base. Since this was a last minute addition to my meal and I did not have the peas on hand, I used extra black beans (I think this may have been an aesthetic improvement as I noticed some of the other reviews stated that it had an odd color that I did not notice) and did add some of the leftover sauteed onions I had already made (seasoned with cumin, chili powder and a pinch of cinnamon). I used vegetable broth rather than a chicken stock to make it a vegetarian soup and I threw in a few dashes of corn meal to thicken it up a little. Then, I took the suggestion from previous reviewer and added some sauteed mushrooms along with about a tablespoon of chili powder and some minced garlic to spice it up some. Finally, I topped it with chopped fresh cilantro and squeezed some of the excess lime juice right on top before serving (feta or cotija cheese or even some creme friache would have also been a good garnish for this soup if I’d had some). My family loved it and it went really well with the black bean and cheese empanadas. Thanks!

I made this recipe once as is (but with plain black beans), and it was fairly bland, so this time I took other reviewers’ suggestions and added cumin, cayenne, Cajun seasoning, and garlic, and I used vegetable broth, and it was much better. I liked the flavor better before I blended it, though. Before it was blended, I could really taste the coconut, but the peas overpowered the coconut once the soup was pureed. Plus, I wasn’t crazy about the texture–there were lots of pea husks. Next time, I’ll blend the soup before adding the peas. Bonus points for simplicity and ease of preparation.

I made this recipe because it happened to contain the ingredients I had on hand, but I definitely approached with a great deal of skepticism. I was pleasantly surprised with the taste, but it does need the extra kick that previous reviewers have suggested (eg: cumin, cayenne pepper, garlic). I tossed in some roughly shredded coconut at the end, but I don’t know that I would recommend that to others. As has been previously remarked, the colour of the soup is quite off-putting, but give it a try- I plan to make it again.

Ugly but delicious! I would give it 5 stars if I were rating it based on the additions of the best-rated reviewer (cumin, cayenne, garlic, cajun seasoning), but I think it still merits 4 as-is, and I hope the rating is good enough to get people to look! Sauteed onions and mushrooms are great, think I’ll try adding some celery to make it taste a little lighter. I’ve made it at least a dozen times, always tweaking the spices, never disappointed!

Not a good choice for kids. I included some of the suggestions made by other reviewers (cumin and other spices, whole beans and chopped onion) and the soup was very tasty. But the kids had a field day with the soup’s unconventional appearance, making all sorts of remarks not suited to dinner conversation and ruining even MY hardened appetite. Given the right grade-school boy crowd, however, this one could be a big hit: serve Kitty Litter Cake for dessert, and don’t forget the white porcelain tureen! Bonus points if you’re out of paper napkins and have to make a substitution.

Wow, I must of done something wrong because this turned out terrible. I followed directions to the T. If you don’t love split pea soup, don’t bother.