Black Bean Soup - Gluten Free & Vegetarian

I've been looking for some nice hearty gluten-free soup recipes for the winter. Soups that can slowly cook in the crock pot, while we're out building things in the snow or going to activities. My kids will eat a wider variety of vegetables in soup, so I was thinking this would be a great place to start. Plus, I've wanted to find tasty vegetarian or low meat soup options.

I've found a couple of soup recipes that are pretty good, but for some reason they haven been what we wanted to add our to family cookbook. Either my family hasn't enjoyed some of them or some recipes are too high on the Glycemic Index and need to be modified before I cook them again.

One of my crock pot soup successes was a gluten free Black Bean Soup, although this version does have green salsa, a nightshade plant, in it. It's very easy and makes enough for left overs.

Black Bean Soup Recipe

2 cans Black Beans
1 1/2 boxes of Vegetable Broth
1 chopped onion
2 cloves minced garlic
2 Tb grapeseed or olive oil
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 cup green salsa
1/2 tsp black pepper
salt to taste
Optional: sour cream as a garnish

I put all the ingredients in the crock pot and set it to 250 degrees. At this temperature, you can start it to cook in the morning and serve in the evening.

So as to my goal with broadening my children's vegetable horizon...didn't happen. They said it had too many onions. (Insert - parental sigh) My husband and I thought it tasted great. We added blue corn tortilla chips and Monterey Jack cheese and it tasted wonderful. I had some Gouda cheese that we tried on our left overs and that was a nice option too.