I'm not sure why it was called spicy and it was actually pretty bland. It was OK after adding salt pepper and some tabasco but there are plenty of similar soup recipes that are much better so I won't be making this one again.
Thank you Cathryn for this good soup. It has a lovely earthy flavour that makes you just want to eat more and more! My Portuguese husband liked it a lot - I used Romano and kidney beans (because that's what I had in the cupboard) - I must try the great northern beans the next time I make it. Laura Pearsall.
I'm sorry but why is this soup called spicy? There isn't anything in it that is spicy. Also I found I had to cook it alot longer than 25 minutes over medium-high heat to get the carrots and potatoes to cook all the way through.
Effective and imaginative pairing of red wine and vegetable juice cocktail!!! Made up this recipe in my crock pot on New Year's Eve day adding a 1/4 pound of Canadian bacon). Plugged in the crock pot when we returned from New Year's Eve celebration to allow for overnight cooking and had a marvelous hardy soup for "noshing" during the football games! This soup is a keeper and one we'll return to many times in the coming months!
I doctored the seasonings on this quite a bit and I can't use alcohol in cooking so I had to omit the red wine. The soup turned out delicious and my (very picky) husband made a point of telling me that he really liked it a LOT. I didn't have celery so I used bell pepper and some celery seed in place of that. I added marjoram parsley Bacon Salt a little red hot sauce a bay leaf and some herbes de Provence. I ran most of the ingredients lightly through the food processor before adding them to the pot. The soup turned out delicious with a very nice texture.
This soup was a hit. The best part was the red wine broth....delicious.
Even though there is nothing spicy about this soup it is very good and full of flavour.
The core recipe was very good. I added some hot peppers to give it a kick.
OK first of all if you're using dry beans its going to take most of the day to cook. I added a little salsa and used spicy V8 to add flavor it and added ham hocks to really give it some flavor.