Spicy Crock Pot Black Beans

Trying to eat healthier means having healthy options accessible. It's so much easier to make healthy lunches and snacks if you have food prepped and ready to go. Lindsay over at the Lean Green Bean is all about Sunday food prep, so I jumped on that bandwagon this week. I made a huge batch of Israeli couscous, a huge batch of my favorite homemade salsa (my condiment of choice =)), a loaf of healthified banana bread (made without the chocolate this time...), and I sliced a bunch of carrots and celery for snacking.

Another thing I did was make a huge pot of black beans in the crock pot. I found this recipe over on Budget Bytes, and I now have a TON of really flavorful black beans in the fridge... I should probably freeze those now that I'm thinking about it... Anyways. This is a really easy way to cook beans, but in my opinion, the original recipe has ZERO flavor. None. Seriously the most bland black beans I've ever had. I like the texture that the tomatoes add, but this recipe definitely needs a lot of seasoning.

Spicy Crock pot Black Beans
(Recipe adapted from this one.)

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. of dried black beans
• 2 jalapenos; finely minced
• 15 oz. can of fire roasted tomatoes (with juices)
• 4 cloves of garlic; minced
• 9 cups of water or low sodium chicken stock
• 1/4 cup of cumin
• 1/4 cup of chili powder
• salt to taste (added at the end)

Directions:

1. Sort through the beans and remove all damaged beans and any stones. Rinse off to remove dust and put in the slow cooker
2. Add the tomatoes, garlic, jalapeno, water (or stock) and spices. 
3. Set the heat to high and cook for 6 hours. 
4. Add salt to season (I love salt more than I should, and used probably about 2-2.5 tablespoons). 

I now have SO many beans! I used these beans for the black bean soup I made Monday night instead of using canned beans. This is such an economical way to make black beans. This recipe cost me about $3.00, and I have enough beans left to make about 2 more pots of soup, or these amazing sounding Greek style black bean burgers =)

The recipe for the soup is easy enough, but if you use dried beans instead of cans, use about 5 cups. Perfect consistency and amazing flavor!