Mexican Chorizo & Black Bean Stew

This hearty and nourishing Mexican Chorizo and Black Bean Stew recipe is inspired by Melissa Clark’s NYT Cooking recipe, and tweaked by the Vorpagel household to be something uniquely delicious that we love!

My wife loves black beans, and I love chorizo sausage. This simple recipe seemed like a good way to combine ingredients that we both love into one delicious dish. We love stews, Mexican flavors, and dishes that only need one dish to cook, which makes this dish perfect for us!

This Mexican Chorizo and Black Bean Stew could be called a chili by some, but, we prefer to call it a stew, as we’re not much of a chili household. The texture is rich from the black beans and tomatoes cooking down, while Lake Geneva Country Meats’ flavorful Mexican-style Chorizo perfectly seasons the dish with a slightly smoky and savory heat that’s not too spicy.

This dish is packed with protein from the chorizo and beans, and it is guaranteed to fill your stomach! We especially love making it when the weather is cold – it’s like the food is hugging us and telling us it’ll be okay.

You can make this recipe spicy by adding a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce when you add the beans and tomatoes if you like, but we don’t think it’s necessary. Adding dashes of hot sauce or diced chili peppers are other ways to spice up this recipe if you like.

We’ve also added a cup of frozen corn about halfway through cooking, and we really enjoyed the bit of sweetness that the corn brought, plus the little extra color made the dish look happy.

It’s hard to tell exactly how long the dish needs to cook – it’s done when the beans are softened, and tomatoes have fallen apart a bit – but you have lots of leeway in the cooking time. You can cook it less and have more liquid and firmer beans, or you can cook it more to have less liquid and softer beans. It’s up to you!

After the dish is done cooking, we serve it warm in bowls and top it with chopped cilantro, avocado slices, pickled radishes, squeezes of lime juice, dollops of sour cream, pickled jalapeños (me only, not my wife!), and whatever other Mexican-style toppings we have available at the time. Make it the way ou like!

Let us know what you think of this simple, but tasty recipe and how you made it at home in the comments. We love hearing how you customize and tweak this recipe, just like we did from the original.

We’ll see you soon at Lake Geneva Country Meats!