Review: Experienced cooks only
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 21, 2013
As food prices rise, more and more people are looking for inexpensive yet filling recipes that can be adapted for their family.You can use this book as a *starting* point for your recipes, but should be cautious in following the directions as they are written. Several of the recipes aren't actually for soups, but rather for very thick stews, a disappointment if you're planning on feeding several people. Other recipes would wind up very salty as you not only use boullion, but add additional salt.  Still more have virtually no seasoning at all.For example, the Chipotle Butternut Squash Soup (which is just essentialy butternut squash soup with black beans and a chipotle pepper added in) would be *very* thick as it uses only 2 cups of broth. The Fast Fiesta Soup has no seasoning at all, except for 2 tablespoons of green chiles.Another thing that would make this better (or more helpful) would be designating are the beans canned? Drained? Cooked? Dried?  As written, you don't know and, if you're just starting out cooking with beans, you will wind up in trouble and have inedible food. Also some kind of estimate of servings - would it serve 2? 4? 8?  Unless you're an experienced cook, you won't know.Standardize the measurements. Some recipes call for 15 ounces of beans while others tell you to use a pound (which is back to the canned/dried question).Adding in a short segment on how to cook beans, as well as adapting the recipes for slow cookers, could also tremendously improve the quality of the book.For free and if you're an experienced cook who can adapt and alter recipes on the fly, it's a good recipe book.  If you're a novice at cooking or beans in general, it's not worth the free cost. You'll wind up throwing out more food than you'll eat.