Hello, Dick Cheney here,
This is an easy recipe for the best black beans that I have ever had.
My great grandmother made these for me since I was a baby, and I make and eat them frequently.
This recipe is fairly simple but more flavorful than you would expect given the amount of ingredients and effort needed to make it.
Hardware wise you will need:
A good pot with a lid, size dependent on the amount of beans you wish to consume
A large bowl, for inspecting the beans
a cutting board and a knife
OPTIONAL> an instant pot will reduce the time needed to make these beans, as you will be making dried beans but it is not essential and will require experimentation to get the ratio of water to beans correct.
Ingredients>
Dried black beans, I like the aldi ones but any dried black bean willl do
Fresh garlic, pre peeled is okay, but bulb will be better every time
1-2 fresh roma tomatoes, These are not optional, but good tomato paste from the tube is also okay just avoid canned tomatoes or flavorless tomatoes. Passata or tomato puree will work too.
One medium yellow onion, Most onions will work, red onions will make the color weird though
Water
Salt
Chicken bullion powder or better than bullion concentrate, I like the better than bullion but both work, chicken is preferable but veggie is also pretty good. beef is a bit strong
Instructions:
The first step is to examine your beans. Place the beans in your large bowl, go through them with your fingers and make sure there are no rocks. Then add water to the bowl of dry beans and remove anything that floats.
Pour the water off of the beans taking care not to spill the beans, and put your pot on the stove.
Dump all of the now damp beans into the pot and add water so that it it 2:1 water to beans.
Turn the heat on to medium high and bring the beans to a boil.
Once the beans have reached a strong boil turn the pot down to a low simmer.
Now you wait. It will take a few hours for the beans to cook, Check on them every hour or so to make sure that they have enough water covering them and stir a little to make sure they don’t stick and burn.
During the boiling process you will get a lot of gross purple grey scum in the pot, you should skim it off with a spoon. Keep simmering the beans until they are starting to break and the liquid gets thicker. If you want this to go faster you can keep the beans at a boil but this will turn unattended cooking into attended cooking and it will be much more annoying. Remember, you really need to keep checking them and stirring occasionally, if it gets scorched the whole pot is ruined.
Once the beans have begun to break open and the liquid has started to thicken, the ratio of water can be reduced down to 1:1 beans to water by volume, maybe a little bit more but it all depends on how you prefer your beans. I prefer mine almost all bean, low liquid.
Once the beans have reached this point you can turn them down to as low as you want. From this point the goal is to just keep them warm while you start the next step.
Chop up the onion and the tomato and the garlic as small as you can get them, paste adjacent is the goal. Alternatively you can just dump it all into a food processor or blender, it doesn’t matter much. If you are using paste or pureed tomato product just chop the onions and garlic.
Heat up your frying pan and add oil or butter (not too much just to coat the bottom of the pan), then add your vegetables. cook these until the onion and garlic are soft and almost broke down. You will need to stir this so that it doesn’t burn.
Once the vegetables have cooked down add them to the beans in the pot and stir. Now you can raise the heat on the beans and vegetables up to a low boil and add your salt and chicken stock concentrate or bullion of choice to taste. It will take ~ 2-3 tablesboons of stock concentrate. Add a little and taste it to make sure it isn’t too salty. Keep in mind that in the fridge overnight it will get ~10% saltier so add a bit less salt than you think you need.
Keep this pot cooking for around half an hour after adding the vegetables and stock, it just needs time for the flavors to come together. At this point the black beans should be soft and a large amount of them will have broken. The liquid should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon but st this point you can adjust the amount of liquid to suit your preference.
And that’s it, thats the beans. The only real difference is the tomato/sofrito thing but it makes a pretty big difference. I usually eat them over rice, and this also works with pinto beans.
PS: i know wendell is looking for good fake meat, I find that quorn is the most agreeable in the alternative chicken sphere, but for beef impossible is the only thing that is remotely passable. it makes an okay spaghetti and meatballs or meatloaf, but it just isn’t the same.
PPS: If you will be eating a lot of beans this winter a pressure cooker or instant pot really makes things easy.
Tune in next time for matzo ball soup or something
-Carmine