According to my calendar, it’s officially winter! If you’re anything like me then you’re not exactly thrilled by this news- I feel you and I’m sorry. Here in not-so-sunny Ohio, winter typically means freezing temperatures and lots of cold, wet snow. Strangely though, this year the cold and snow has yet to make an appearance. Regardless, when winter hits I am drawn to making big pots of soup to keep me warm.

While I have lots of favorite soups, black bean is the one that I make most often. There’s something comforting about a big bowl of plump black beans swimming in a rich spicy broth. Plus, it’s my wife’s favorite soup. She was the one who introduced me to black bean soup way back when, only those were pre-vegan days and her black bean soup always came with slices of kielbasa on top- gross. I always pulled them off and wrapped them in my napkin for later disposal- don’t tell her, to this day I don’t think she knows.

When we decided to live vegan, we did it together and black bean soup was one of the first things I attempted to re-create. I never followed a recipe or learned how to make it, I just guessed until I found a combination of spices that worked well for us. Over the years I’ve gotten fairly good at throwing things into a pot and having them turn out pretty darn tasty. This soup is no exception, except I actually measured out my ingredients this time so I could tell you what I did. Trust me, it’s really simple.

This soup is a bit different than the traditional black bean soup I make, this one features jackfruit. You know jackfruit, the fruit that has the consistency of pulled meat? Have you tried this stuff yet? It’s been popping up on recipe blogs all over the place the past year and with good reason- it’s fantastic. Because of it’s shredded texture, jackfruit makes an awesome “pulled” BBQ sandwich and that’s how I usually see it prepared. I’ve been playing around with jackfruit and wanted to try it in something other than a delicious BBQ sauce. I thought it might go well inside black bean soup and I was right. It adds a great hearty chewiness to the soup that’s missing from traditional black bean soup.

Brine, Syrup – Which Jackfruit Do You Use?

If you’ve never worked with jackfruit before, there’s a few things you should know. First, there are two types of jackfruit: Green young jackfruit in brine and ripe jackfruit in syrup. Both are commonly sold at Asian markets.

Left: Ripe Jackfruit in syrup – Right: Green Young Jackfruit in brine

To achieve the shredded texture that jackfruit is famous for, you’ll need to buy green young jackfruit in brine. Secondly, you always want to make sure to drain the brine and rinse the heck out of the jackfruit before using it. I made the mistake of skipping this step once and, although I had drained the brine, my jackfruit had an unpleasant bitter taste to it. Rinse that fruit!