This vegetarian and vegan black bean soup is an easy, quick, healthy, low-fat, and high-protein vegetarian soup recipe that will warm up your family in less than 15 minutes flat. It's a versatile recipe that you can also make vegan and gluten-free. It's also easy enough that you can involve your kids in helping to make it, giving them valuable experience in preparing meals.

You will start with canned black beans to eliminate the time for soaking and cooking beans from scratch, and you can use commercially prepared salsa or your own fresh, homemade salsa.

Need it to be vegan? You can make this black bean soup vegan by simply omitting the cheese and sour cream or substituting vegan cheese or vegan sour cream.

Need it to be gluten-free? If you need this recipe to be gluten-free as well, just use water instead of the vegetable broth, or check to make sure that the broth you use is gluten-free (most aren't, but some are, so read the label if needed).

This vegetarian black bean soup recipe appears on the website of Bush's Beans, reprinted with permission.