This traditional Costa Rican sopa negra (black bean soup) recipe is a delicious, healthy, and simple vegetarian/vegan main dish that everyone loves!  Just black beans, veggies, and water- too easy and too delicious!

About This Costa Rican Sopa Negra Recipe

Black beans are one of the cornerstones of Costa Rican cooking, and there is a myriad of delicious recipes featuring the ingredient. We started making more types of black bean recipes when our girls were learning how to eat solid foods and they loved this soup. Both of them really loved black beans, and I think they are super easy to prepare.

One of our favorite recipes from Costa Rica is the Black Bean soup or caldo de frijol. Most Costa Rican kitchens have a pressure cooker, in which black beans are often prepared fresh in the morning so they’ll be ready for lunch or dinner.

Everyone knows that freshly cooked black beans smell so absolutely delicious that it’s hard to wait to eat them until mealtime. Which is how I suspect black bean soup was invented. It was made into a meal, then, by adding a hard-boiled egg. Apart from being a staple in most Costa Rican home cooking, you can also find sopa negra on most restaurant menus. 

This dish is easily prepared in the slow cooker. However, I prefer to use the pressure cooker or Instant Pot because the meal is ready in about an hour. I generally get the beans started, put the eggs in a pot, and bring to a boil- everything is done about the same time. 

This sopa negra is a gluten-free recipe, vegetarian recipe, and a vegan recipe if you omit the eggs. It’s really a great recipe for almost anyone!

Sopa Negra Recipe

Ingredients: 

• 2 cups dry black beans  
• 8 cups of water  
• 1/4 sweet red pepper 
• 1/4 white onion 
• 1/2 bunch cilantro  
• 3 garlic cloves  
• 1 tbsp salt, sea salt preferred   
• 2 stalks of celery, cut in half   
• 1 bay leaf
• 4-6 eggs hard-boiled and peeled  

Instructions:  

Roughly chop all vegetables. Rinse the beans under cold tap water and drain.

Place beans, water, sweet red pepper, onion, carrots, and garlic in a slow cooker and cook, stirring lightly. Cook on low for 4-6 hours or on high for 2-4 hours while stirring occasionally every 30 minutes. This is also a great Instant Pot recipe, which can be made in the pressure setting on high for 25- 20 minutes. 

While the soup is cooking, hard-boil the desired number of eggs and peel.

To serve, remove large pieces of vegetables (optional)  and place black beans in a fairly large bowl. Add one egg per serving. Cover the beans and egg with broth. Serve hot, with Salsa Lizano and white rice for garnish. 

Substitutions

In place of the water, you could use chicken broth or vegetable broth.

You may find this soup in Costa Rica with kidney beans. The broth is a bit redder in color, but the flavor is essentially the same.

Variations

The Sopa Negra soup is traditionally served by removing the big pieces of cooked vegetables before serving.  However, we love to eat them too, so I just leave them in the soup.

If you are ordering this at a Costa Rican restaurant, you may want to find out how the soup is served. It might just be broth and rice. It might have the beans. It might come with a fried egg or a boiled egg. Just clarify and ask for what you want.  

Once the beans are about on their last leg, you can also make them into this amazing Costa Rican bean dip.

Serving Suggestions

This is a great recipe to serve with Costa Rican white rice. You may also find Costa Rican black bean soup served with freshly made tortilla chips or with homemade warm tortillas. This soup is always served with Salsa Lizano.

Other black bean recipes you might like:

• Costa Rican Rice and Beans
• Costa Rican Gallo Pinto Recipe
• Black Bean Empanada

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