Vegan Cheesy Taco Black Beans

These cheesy taco black beans are high in protein, high in fiber and low in cost! This recipe only uses four ingredients and you can make it in less than five minutes! I hesitated to post this recipe because it’s so easy and I kept wondering if it was actually a recipe. But I recently saw someone call apples with cinnamon a recipe, so if that counts, this counts! You could eat this as a side dish or as a whole meal. If you want to spice it up, you could also add things like vegan sour cream, avocado, roasted bell peppers, rice, or eat it with tortilla chips! If you like super easy (and maybe obvious) recipes like this and would like to see more, let me know!

Stuff You’ll Need

• Black Beans – I use either low sodium or no sodium black beans to keep the sodium down and to keep this from tasting too salty, so I recommend that you do the same! You could also use dried beans to reduce the cost further, but then it wouldn’t be a five minute meal. Also, don’t drain the beans – we will be using some of the bean liquid to make a cheesy sauce.
• Nutritional Yeast – this is a shelf-stable ingredient used in a lot of vegan recipes to add a cheesy, savory flavor. Nutritional Yeast can be found at most grocery stores and you can also buy it online. There are two types – fortified (with B vitamins) and non-fortified.
• Taco Seasoning – you can definitely make your own taco seasoning, but I really love McCormick Mild Taco Seasoning. You can buy it in a larger container to save money too!
• Vegan Cheese – I prefer Violife Mexican Style shredded vegan cheese because I think it melts really well and has a good flavor. Feel free to use your favorite cheese though!

How to Make it & Pictures

• Empty half of a can of black beans into a microwave-safe bowl. Also add in some of the bean liquid. The bean liquid and nutritional yeast make a cheesy sauce, so add more or less bean liquid depending on how saucy you would like your beans. I usually use 1 – 2 tbsp of bean liquid, and if I’m making two servings of this recipe, I am pretty much using all of the bean liquid in the can in most cases.
• Add the nutritional yeast and taco seasoning to the bowl, and mix everything together really well. You definitely want to mix it really well to make sure that every bite has that taco flavor. It also helps creates the sauce.

• Sprinkle the shredded vegan cheese on top.
• Microwave for 60 – 90 seconds until the cheese is fully melted. Vegan cheese melts best when there is humidity, and since we have a cheesy sauce in this recipe, the vegan cheese should melt easily.

Silly Little Haiku

Cheesy Black Bean Bowl

I have made this many times

It’s my favorite