Black bean soup was one of the first recipes that I experimented with when I started cooking through a plant-based lens. I most likely did not soak my beans, and I remember feeling highly impatient with the unexpectedly long cooking time. I even gave up that evening and finished cooking the soup the following day. Through years of legume cookery and culinary school, I learned that black bean cooking time can be fickle, yet the rewarding taste and texture of dried beans surpasses anything that can come from a can