Hearty Black Bean & Rice Stew {Gluten-Free, Vegan}

We’ve been using our vegetable scraps to make homemade vegetable broth and at one point had nearly a dozen mason jars full of broth, sooo we had to find a way to use it!

That’s why we’ve been making LOTS of soups and stews.

This one-pot recipe makes a lot of food and doesn’t require much effort. Once you saute the base vegetables, you just toss in the rest of the ingredients and less than an hour later, you have a big pot of warm, cozy, and hearty stew.

You could really use whatever vegetables you have on hand for this – sub out spinach or Swiss chard for kale or use different herbs, if you prefer.

We had mushrooms to use up, so we chopped them up and put them in to add a bit of a “meaty” texture but without the meat. Plus, mushrooms are one of Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s GBOMBS foods – some of the healthiest foods on the planet!

Yield: ~10 cups

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 medium carrots, chopped
• 1/2 pound cremini (AKA baby Portobello) mushrooms, diced
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 cans diced tomatoes, no salt added (don’t drain off the juices)
• 1 15-ounce BPA-free can black beans (we like Eden brand)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 cup long grain brown rice (Trader Joe’s sells 15-minute brown rice!)
• 6 cups vegetable broth (Click here to see how cheap and EASY it is to make your own)
• 4 cups dark greens, chopped (we used red curly kale)
• black pepper to taste

Directions

1. In a colander/fine mesh strainer, rinse rice under cold water. Set aside.
2. In a large stock/soup pot over medium-high heat, heat oil. Add chopped onions, garlic, carrots and mushrooms to pot. Mix well. Cook until veggies are soft, about 5-7 minutes.
3. Add cayenne pepper, oregano and sea salt to vegetables and saute 1-2 minutes more.
4. Add tomatoes and their juices, beans, bay leaves, brown rice, and broth. Stir to combine. Bring to a simmer.
5. Once simmering, cover and reduce heat. Cook at a low simmer for 40-50 minutes or until rice is fully cooked. We used 15-minute quick cooking brown rice from Trader Joe’s, so we had a much shorter cooking time.
6. Once rice is cooked, add dark greens and stir to combine. Add water if needed (we added about 1 cup of water). Cover and let cook about 5 minutes or until greens are wilted.
7. Remove bay leaves and serve.

Since this made such a large batch, we froze some of the soup in mason jars, so we will have it in the future when we don’t feel like cooking but want a home cooked meal 🙂 If you freeze it, make sure to leave 2 inches of room between the top of the stew and the lid, so it has room to expand!