Not White Or Black Beans — Add These To Your Next Pot Of Soup For Extra Saucy Flavor (And Fiber)

There's no shortage of ways to add a little extra bean-based goodness to a pot of soup, whether it comes in the form of navy, Great Northern, or butter beans. However, there may be another can in the back of your pantry that you hadn't yet considered throwing into a pot of soup – chili beans. These cans usually comprise of pinto, kidney, or even black or cannellini beans, which have been simmered in a seasoned tomato-based sauce that also includes garlic, chili peppers, and other spices like chili powder and cumin. Because they're sold as the beans you'd usually add to a vegetarian chili recipe, you're getting much more than a tin of plain beans — you're getting a massive start on flavor, too.

So not only are chili beans a way to bulk out soup with more fiber and protein, they can also give you a good base for your soup with more sauce and seasoning. That's a pretty useful addition for something that requires virtually no preparation: you don't need to spend time soaking dry beans, nor do you need to drain away the bean brine before you add them in. Just one little can becomes a much easier, not to mention tastier, way to add more beans to your next meal.

A very obvious place to start is tomato soup. Chili beans, as they're already cooked in a tomato-based sauce, can slip straight into the liquid and add a little kick. They can also work really beautifully in more simple vegetable soups like carrot or sweet potato where they can either bring in some extra texture, or they can get blended into the base with everything else, making for a thicker soup. Or, if you're making a tortilla-style soup, chili beans have plenty of the smoky, savory flavors that you'd usually build yourself using several separate spices from the spice rack. While chili isn't actually soup, the two often share plenty of the same ingredients, depending on the type of soup.

However, that overlap in seasonings is important to bear in mind when adding chili beans to your favorite soup recipe. Chili beans are already seasoned (and actually some brands can be high in sodium), so scale back the salt, stock cubes, or other seasoning in the soup before tasting it and deciding what to add in. The chili beans are also in quite a thick sauce, so if you're making a more delicate and brothy soup, add them more sparingly than you would in a thicker and heartier soup.