How to Make Black Bean Sauce

Watch this video of TV360 to learn how to make black bean sauce.

Right now, what we’re going to make is a black bean sauce and it’s a very versatile sauce. You can use it on tortillas, you can use it on rice, you can have it over vegetables or tofu or chicken if you’d like, but today we’re going to use a little whole wheat linguini. We’re going to start with half of a red onion and you can do this relatively chunky. Next, we’re going to throw in a jalapeno and depending on how brave you are, you can use a larger chunk of the jalapeno. Today I’m going to use about half of one. Some people take out the seeds but I really like spicy food so I tend to pretty much always leave them in. Then you just turn the stove on to a medium heat. Throw in about a half a tablespoon of olive oil and just put all that together. Once the onion starts to become a little clear like this, we can add our black beans. Because when black beans are canned, they usually add salt to the water, I like to both drain the mixture and to rinse them out a little bit before I add them into a dip. You could use a strainer. What I like to do is I like to just add a little bit of water to the partially opened can, shake it up a little then just redrain and have these right in and this is also a good point to add a few cloves of crushed garlic and once everything is a little bit acclimated, you want to mash up the beans and you can use anything from like a whisk to a wooden spoon or even a fork. I have this. It’s a handy dandy potato masher. The object isn’t to pulverize every single bean, it’s just to get a good almost like refried bean consistency. It’s good to have a little chunk in there every now and again. And for the vegetable broth, this is usually available at pretty much any supermarket, I’m using a no sodium added vegan vegetable bullion. One of these cubes makes two cups of water. We only need a cup for this dish so I’m just going to cut it in half and add a cup of water and then microwave it for about 30 to 45 seconds. Once the bullion is done heating up, you want to just take it out and mash it up with a fork. So once we’re at this stage, we’ve got our beans mashed in with the onions and peppers and garlic. We want to be cooking it over a low heat and we can add a cup of vegetable bullion. Mixed in together and because it’s still a little bit soupy, I like to add a little bit of cornstarch to thicken up the stew a bit. All you want to do is you want to take a mug, add a little cold water to it and you add about a teaspoon of cornstarch. See how that goes, once that’s all mixed up, go ahead and add it to your black bean sauce and do a good stirring until it starts to thicken. This is definitely enough black bean sauce to accommodate an enter bag of whole wheat linguini. Just make sure it’s all immersed, add a little salt. Initially, it was very tough to be a vegan. Just because every time I go to a supermarket, I would have to read a -- worth of ingredients to make sure that things were okay for me to eat. As far as diet like my-if anything my palate has really expanded since I’ve become vegan. We’ve got our bowl of pasta. Put so much sauce as your heart desires. I want a little bit of fresh cilantro and there’s no need to cut it, just toss them all in. This is a very healthy dish. There is very little salt. There’s no cholesterol and the whole wheat pasta means you’re getting some fiber. That came out well.