Joanie’s Pumpkin Black Bean Soup

Back in 2018, I had a group of vegan friends over for a salad potluck. Everyone was to bring a favorite salad to share. The day before our gathering my friend Joanie sent a message asking if she could bring a pot of soup instead – of course I said yes. She showed up with this amazing Pumpkin Black Bean Soup that was to die for. It was such a nice addition to our salad buffet –  I think we all went back for seconds and ate every last bit of soup. Of course we all requested the recipe and I have been making it on a regular basis for the past month. I almost feel guilty for not sharing the recipe with you sooner because, I know you are going to love it too. It uses simple pantry ingredients and takes only minutes to make in the Instant Pot pressure cooker. What’s not to love about that?

You have no idea how difficult it is to photograph black bean soup! It’s almost impossible to make it look good. Just know that it really does taste delicious. It is such a different flavor because of the unusual combination of allspice, cinnamon and black pepper. It all works perfectly well together with the canned pumpkin which adds fiber, creaminess and flavor.

I have met the nicest people since going plant based. I first met Joanie when she attended one of my whole food plant based cooking classes. She is so much fun to be around – love her positive attitude. She had a knee replacement since I had last seen her and she looked fabulous! While Joanie was recovering from her surgery a friend brought her this soup and kindly shared the recipe. Thank you for passing it on and sharing this wonderful recipes with all of us Joanie.

I like to double this recipe – it fits nicely in the 8 QT Instant Pot. If you have the 6 QT you can double the recipe but hold out 2 cans of beans and add them after it has cooked. Garlic goes well with black bean soup and is really healthy so I add a few cloves of garlic to the recipes as well. With an immersion/stick blender you can blend the soup right in the Instant Pot. Love that. If you want it to have more texture add another can of drained beans after blending the soup.

A drizzle of your favorite balsamic vinegar is a nice touch just before serving. I like the California Balsamic Sweet Heat but Gilroy Garlic, Smoked Hickory, or just plain balsamic would also be delicious.

I like to serve this soup with a beautiful side salad. This Mexican Chopped Salad with Crispy Tortilla Strips is a perfect match.

This Fall Salad With Crunchy Japanese Sweet Potato Croutons is a crowd pleaser and will go nicely with the soup recipe too.

For dessert I mad the simple but fabulous Fall Pudding and topped it with pomegranate seeds.

Use code “NUTMEG15” for a 15% discount

Substitutions

Fire roasted tomatoes – diced tomatoes

Canned pumpkin – canned butternut squash or

about 2 cups of fresh cooked pumpkin or fresh cooked butternut squash

Joanie’s Pumpkin Black Bean Soup

Joanie Byrne Aliventi – Nutmeg Notebook

It uses simple pantry ingredients and takes only minutes to make in the Instant Pot pressure cooker. What’s not to love about that?

5 from 3 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Course Main Course

Cuisine Mexican

Servings 4

Equipment

• Pressure Cooker, Immersion blender

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 2 cans black beans rinsed and drained
• 1 14.5 oz can Muir Glen fire roasted diced tomatoes – no salt added
• 1 15 oz canned pumpkin
• 1/2 onion chopped
• 4 small garlic cloves – or to taste
• 3/4 teaspoon allspice
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 4 cups low sodium vegetable broth

Garnish

• Balsamic Vinegar to drizzle over the top

Instructions

 

• Set Instant Pot to saute mode, using a small amount of the vegetable broth saute the onion and garlic for 2-3 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients, give it a stir. Put the lid on and set it on high pressure for 5 minutes. Allow natural pressure release. Using an immersion blender, blend to desired consistency. The first time I made this I was using my new immersion blender which is far more powerful than my old one and I over blended it! So then I added an extra can of beans to give it some more body. We liked that so well that I have continued to do that. After the soup is in the bowl drizzle your favorite balsamic vinegar over the top. If you have any of the California Balsamic flavored vinegars use one of your favorites. I like the Sweet Heat on this one. Yum!

Notes

Serving Suggestion: Serve with a big bowl of Chopped Salad on the side. We like to add brown rice or dice cooked potato in the bottom of the bowl before we ladle the soup on top. Then drizzle it with a plain or flavored balsamic vinegar.

Notes: A double batch of this recipe will fit nicely in the 8 qt Instant Pot. If you have the 6 qt Instant pot you can double the recipe but hold out 2 cans of beans and add them after it has cooked. We like to add an extra can of beans after blending just to give the soup a little more body.

Substitutions

Fire roasted tomatoes – diced tomatoes

Canned pumpkin – canned butternut squash or

about 2 cups of fresh cooked pumpkin or fresh cooked butternut squash

Keyword black beans, pressure cooker, pumpkin

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Get Healthy  Stay Healthy  One Meal At A Time

Please note that we partner with affiliate platforms where commission may be earned based on clicks and or purchases – all at no additional cost to you.  Affiliate links help bloggers like me to fund the free content that we provide on our blogs. This page contains affiliate links.

Be sure to check out our Amazon Affiliate Page where we share many of our favorite small kitchen appliances, kitchen tools, food products and books. Nutmeg Notebook is a participant in the Amazon Affiliates program that is designed to provide a means for sites to earn a commission from qualifying purchases. Thank you for your support.

Nutmeg Notebook Online Courses

Batch Cooking with Tami Kramer Course Link

We invite you to purchase this course to learn all about the “What, When, Why, and How” of batch cooking, to support your quest to live a healthy, whole food, plant based life style. The course contains a 100 page eBook & course guide that includes over 50 of Tami’s recipes. There are 10 lesson modules containing 32 videos, totaling over 15 hours of comprehensive instruction. Tami will cover batch cooking concepts, techniques, and strategies, as well as specific recipe demonstrations. 

 Beautiful Chopped Salad Course Link

Tami Kramer’s Beautiful Chopped Salad Course includes a complete full color 40+ page recipe PDF eBook and 12 instructional videos. In the course Tami will teach you how to batch prep salads, what to shop for, and tips to ensure that your stored salads will last for a week. She will share different methods for chopping salads, and all the details about how she tops these beauties.

We are also Holland Bowl Mill Affiliates. The 15 inch Holland Bowl Mill Cherry fruit bowl has a permanent home on our kitchen island. It’s beautiful and useful. The heart shaped bowl makes me happy – I love everything heart shaped! We use our 15 inch Beechwood & cherry bowl (His and Her’s) to chop our salads every day. Eating a salad for one meal every day helped me lose weight and become a size 4. I still eat a salad for one meal a day but now it’s a Big Beautiful Chopped salad and it helps me stay a size 4! See the Chopped Salad Blog Post to find out how you can incorporate a chopped salad into your daily food plan and how you can get a free mezzaluna knife with your Holland Bowl salad bowl order when you use our Holland Bowl affiliate link as well as free engraving and free shipping.