Rinse and drain beans and place in the bottom of a large (7- to 8-quart) slow cooker. Lay chicken thighs on top, and add garlic, green chiles, Rotel, and jalapeño (if using) to the slow cooker. Carefully pour chicken broth over ingredients, and season mixture with cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne (if using), and black pepper. Cook on HIGH for 6 to 8 hours or LOW for 10 to 12 hours or until beans are tender.
A half hour before serving, remove chicken to a plate or cutting board. Stir sour cream into soup and replace lid of slow cooker. In the meantime, cut chicken into large chunks and shred it with two forks. Add chicken back to the soup and taste for seasoning, adding more salt, pepper, or spices, to taste. Cover and continue to cook for 30 more minutes.
Before serving, garnish soup with a mound of crushed tortilla chips, a pile of shredded cheese, a dollop of salsa, and a sprinkling of fresh chopped cilantro...plus any other toppings you wish!
Notes
You may pre-soak your black beans before cooking if you wish, but it's not necessary. The overall cooking time of your beans will be the same whether you soak or not.
Black beans can take varying amounts of time to become tender when cooking in a slow cooker. This time can be affected by a number of factors, from the age of the beans to the heat level of your slow cooker.
Older model slow cookers often heat to a lower temperature than newer model slow cookers. Therefore, you must be familiar with how hot your particular slow cooker runs.
My favorite slow cooker is actually a model that doesn't get overly hot (similar to the heat level of older model crockpots). When I use it to make this recipe, I often have to cook on HIGH for 8 to 10 hours before the beans are tender. But again, I am familiar with how that particular slow cooker of mine runs cooler, so I expect it and plan for it.
Old beans can take considerably longer to cook than fresh beans. And using beans immediately after purchasing them from the grocery store doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't sitting in a warehouse for a long time prior to that.
I typically try to cook crockpot black bean recipes on HIGH. That way, if the beans are tender earlier than I anticipate, I can always switch the heat to WARM until it is time to eat. It's not as easy to "speed up" black beans that are still crunchy at dinner time. ;)
This recipe calls for chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts because of the potential for a longer, higher heat cooking time sometimes necessary for dried black beans. Chicken thighs don't dry out as readily as chicken breasts.