This is not a cooking blog, but I cook. I try to cook healthy dishes that are also tasty. (Sweetie says that I can even make tofu taste good.)
Dried beans are supposed to be cheap and easy, but I seem to buy them and then forget to soak them overnight, (what a pain,) and so the pound bags sit in my pantry. Imagine my delight at finding an easy and reasonably fast no-soak recipe! I adapted it from one by Richard Blunt in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of Backwoods Home Magazine.
Bean Stew
1 pound dried beans (pinto, cannelloni, kidney, pink, Roman, or baby limas)
8 cups water
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
1 or 2 carrots, cut into medallions
1 medium potato, cut into 1 inch cubes
several garlic cloves, peeled and sliced in half
1. Rinse beans well in cold water and allow to drain in colander for at least 15 minutes.
2. Put beans and water in a heavy-bottomed container and bring to a boil. (I use a cast iron chicken cooker.)
3. Add vegetables.
4. Cover and reduce heat until a slow simmer is achieved. (I had to turn my gas burner all the way down and slightly cock the lid to get the perfect slow simmer, which means that the beans are almost, but not quite, boiling.) (Too high of a heat will turn the beans to mush.)
5. Cook for about 2 hours, or until the beans are tender, then season. (I use Cajun seasoning a lot, and it works great with this dish. Plain salt and pepper would also work. Maybe some hot sauce, or soy sauce.)
I like to serve this dish over rice.
2 comments:
Thank you! My favorite episode being where I put the beans out to soak, and got around to them two days later, and then deciding that was probably too much.
Ooh, that's a good recipe to know, as I, too, invariably forget to soak my beans ( hence the preponderance of lentils and split peas in my bean-cooking repertoire).
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