Black Bean Chili with Oranges
Submitted by Holley6969
Black bean chili with oranges, an unexpected Yucatan-style pairing. Whole spices, cardamom, allspice, and coriander simmer with dried beans. Topped with fresh orange slices, zest, and sour cream.
YIELD
6 servingsPREP
15 minCOOK
140 minREADY
155 minBlack bean chili with oranges sounds wrong on paper but tastes inevitable in the bowl. The combination is straight out of the Yucatan playbook, where citrus and bean dishes meet warm spices like allspice, cardamom, and coriander to create something more aromatic than a standard Tex-Mex chili.
Dried black beans simmer in chicken broth alongside whole spices for an hour and a half until tender. Then the lid comes off and the heat goes back up to drive off liquid and concentrate everything into a thick, glossy bean stew. Squeeze in half a cup of fresh orange juice off the heat at the end. The acidity wakes up the long-simmered spices, and the orange essential oils carry the whole bowl into completely new territory.
The sliced orange garnish on top is more than decoration. As you spoon the chili out, every bite catches a piece of fresh fruit. The juice mingles with the broth and shifts each spoonful between earthy bean and bright sweet citrus. Sour cream and cilantro round out the toppings.
Pro Tips
- Use whole spices and pull the cardamom hulls before adding only the seeds. Whole spices give cleaner, more aromatic flavor than pre-ground.
- Choose seedless or low-seed oranges like navels for the slice garnish. Picking out seeds at the table is annoying.
- Zest the oranges before juicing. Zest first, juice second, always.
- Don’t skip the high-heat reduction step at the end. The thickening is what turns this from soup into chili.
Variations
- Swap orange for pink grapefruit for a more bitter, sophisticated finish.
- Add a chopped chipotle in adobo for smoky heat.
- Use vegetable broth instead of chicken to make this fully vegetarian.
Ingredients
Directions
Combine in onions, garlic, and oil in a lidded 6 quart sauce pan, over high heat.
Stir often until onions are tinged with brown, about 8 minutes.
Add remaining ingredients, but not zest, juice, or slices, to onions, etc., and bring to a boil over high heat.
Reduce heat to simmer. Cover and simmer until beans are tender to bite, about 1½ to 2 hours.
While beans simmer, remove 2 teaspoons zest, squeeze ½ cup juice, remove peel and white membrane from rest of fruit and slice thinly crosswise, removing seeds.
After the beans become tender, raise heat to high, uncover, and boil until most of the liquid evaporates, about 10 to 15 minutes.
(Reduce the heat and stir occasionally as mixture thickens.) Remove beans from heat and stir in 1 teaspoon zest and the ½ cup juice.
Ladle beans into serving bowls.
Place the sliced fruit equally on top of the beans in each bowl.
Add to taste: sour cream, fresh cilantro sprigs, salt.
Garnish with the remaining 1 teaspoon zest.
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