Instant Pot Black Bean Soup So Fast You’ll Never Go Back to Canned Bean

I caught Carla Lalli Music weighing a handful of Fritos on a digital scale in the test kitchen. She held them out to me in her palm and cried, “This? This is a serving size of Fritos!” It was approximately seven corn chips, and it was the saddest thing we’d ever seen. And then we ate the whole bag, piled on bowls of creamy, chipotle black bean soup that she’d just made in an Instant Pot.

It’s the reason we’re gathered here today, to celebrate this new recipe that utilizes one of a pressure cooker’s best features: turning dried beans into soft ones in 20 minutes (as opposed to two to three hours it takes on the stove).

There’s always that moment with Instant Pot recipes when your whole body just wants to dump everything in the pot, close it, and call it a day. But if you want a soup with real flavor, ya gotta build it. Carla’s Instant Pot black bean soup recipe begins with cooking bacon on the pot’s sauté function, then sweating some onions, carrot, and garlic, before adding some chipotle chiles in adobo, spices, a pound of dried beans, and water. The chiles, cumin, and salt make this an incredibly well-seasoned and spicy soup, and we loved it, but you can use just one chile, and less salt, if you’d prefer something milder.

A note on timing: I’d estimate there’s 15 minutes of cook time before you close the pot, around 20 minutes to build pressure depending on the machine, 20 minutes cook time under pressure, and 10 minutes to naturally release pressure. Still, it’s a lot of soup, for a very low cost, in an hour! Isn’t pressure cooking fun?!

When the beans are done, use an immersion blender right in the pot (or use a regular blender) to purée the soup into a smooth consistency. Then top each bowl with sour cream, onions, lime juice, cilantro, and Fritos, obviously.

Get the recipe:

Instant Pot Black Bean Soup