Bean Prep: Sorting and Rinsing

Beans seem to be a recurring topic here, but why not?  They’re frugal, nutritious, and so versatile.  And they can even be sprouted for more nutrition – but that’s another post.  Today I just want to talk about the prep work involved BEFORE the cooking starts.

 

For my non-bean-converted friends: are you intimidated by the steps involved in preparing beans?  Or do you just think you don’t like the taste? 

 

I wish I had some great segue here, but I don’t – I really just hope to remove the intimidation.  I’ve loved beans ever since I can remember, so I can only urge you to keep trying them different ways.  Baked beans, chicken tortilla soup, and white chili are some ideas to get you started.  And you already like hummus, right?

 

If you’re new to using dried beans, sorting might be the most confusing step.  It doesn’t take long, and it can be kinda fun (especially if you have some OCD tendencies.)  There are many ways you can do this, but here are some methods I’ve used in the past:

 

- Take small handfuls and inspect carefully

 

- Spread the beans out in one layer on the counter or in a large flat pan with sides (like a jelly roll pan) so you can see all the beans (and any foreign objects) all at once

 

- If you’re using a slow cooker, you can pour the beans onto the clear glass lid and spot the misfits pretty easily (although you can’t tell in this picture):

 

 

Here are a few things I sorted out of some pintos awhile back:

 

 

Those black pebbles are commonly found in a lot of beans, but you DEFINITELY want to fish them out – the one time I didn’t sort my beans, I ended up with a really gritty-tasting soup because those pebbles are concentrated field dirt.  I usually find more in black beans than any other type of bean – maybe they’re sorted with optical scanning equipment so they get by because they appear to be beans?  That’s my theory anyway.

 

I also look for beans that are small and shriveled, excessively dirty (like a black spot covering a whole side of a white bean), or otherwise look old and mishandled.  Beans that are old won’t cook as well and won’t taste as good.

 

The next step – rinsing – is fairly straight forward.  You can put the beans into a large sieve or colander and run under the tap to clean them well.  This is not optional, unless you’re cool with consuming a nice layer of “field dust,” which could include insect droppings, dirt, etc.  A good rinse will remove a lot of this, and the next step should remove the rest.

 

Soaking — the final step — is also easy, but requires a little more forethought.  It becomes mindless pretty quickly, though, once you work all of this into your  weekly kitchen routine.  I will discuss this in more detail in another post.

 

Do you have a favorite bean recipe?  I’m always looking for new ones!

Just a quick update…

So…how is everyone doing?

 

After battling a sinus infection for weeks, then trying to get caught up on the work I actually get paid to do for the last week, I think I’m finally caught up.  There’s still plenty to do, but at least I’m not behind!

 

Subsequently, there hasn’t been much of interest going on in the kitchen for the last week.  I did receive my kombucha SCOBY a little over a week ago from Cultures for Health, though, and it’s coming along quite nicely.  It’s already made two babies!  It’s been fermenting for about 10 days and is still a little too sweet for my tastes, but it should be ready soon.

 

I’ve also been avoiding the internet so I have some time to practice bass guitar, since a good friend is giving me lessons.  I’ve taken drum and guitar lessons in the past (and I played clarinet in middle school), but I just can’t seem to stick with an instrument.  As much as I like music, I really suck at learning to play it.  If I can get past the sore fingers, though, I think I’ll really enjoy bass.  And my guitar lessons are starting to come back to me, so maybe I can attempt that again soon.  My husband’s electric guitar has been collecting dust the whole time we’ve been married!

 

Earlier this evening, I planted some seedlings I got from a fellow gardener at church – six bell peppers, four jalapenos, and four banana peppers.  At first I was hopeful because I found some earthworms in the soil – then I found what I thought were maggots (eew!!!), but it turns out they were grubs.  So I trekked out to Home Depot to buy some diatomaceous earth.  Hopefully that won’t also kill the earthworms?

 

What have y’all been up to?

Menu Plan: Week of April 27

This last week the weather completely changed – instead of having the heater on standby, it’s now the air conditioner.  Temperatures are only in the high 70s, but I’m already dying!  The farmers market starts next week, though, so I should be able to convert our meals to spring mode – not only vegetable-wise, but less oven use, as well.  For now, though, it’s the same stuff:

 

Pot roast, braised carrots and potatoes, salad

Soup – pasta fagioli or white chili

Chard and onion frittatas, sweet potato fries

Tacos, refried pinto beans, rice

Pizza, salad

Sausage, potato and apple skillet dinner

Hamburgers, oven fries

 

I’m hoping to get some eggplant, beans, cucumbers, and more tomatoes and peppers planted.  Maybe even some melons.  We love cantaloupe and honeydew in summer!  So here’s hoping…

Yankee Cornbread (dairy-free)

When I moved to the south, I learned that how you like your cornbread reflects which side of the Mason-Dixon you’re from.  I’ve always thought of cornbread as sweet and cakey, but many southerners prefer theirs unsweetened and fried. 

 

Regardless of where your tastes lie, if you need a dairy-free cornbread, this is a good starting point.  It is quite crumbly, but tasty nonetheless.  If/when I figure out how to make it less crumblesome, I’ll gladly let you know – or perhaps you have some tips?  I’m going to try using some of the ingredients that I use as dough conditioners in my whole wheat bread, so I’ll update this if I find something that works!

 

Yankee Cornbread

 

1 cup flour (soft white or AP)

1 cup cornmeal

1/2-3/4 cup sucanat

1 tsp salt

3 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 egg, beaten

1 cup coconut milk (I use Whole Foods 365 organic – don’t shake it and use the creamier portion)

1/3 cup olive oil (to offset the coconut)

 

Combine all ingredients and bake 25 minutes at 400 in a greased/floured round pan.

 

Here’s a piece…

 

 

…just make sure to let it cool completely before cutting, or else it is especially crumblesome!

 

 

 

Baked Beans

 

Doesn’t that fuzzy picture make you want to eat some?  My camera batteries decided to die tonight at dinner, and the backups were nowhere to be found.  That’s life sometimes.  But back to the food…

 

Do you have any fun memories associated with baked beans, like a summertime picnic or dinner at Grandma’s house? 

 

My husband fondly remembers eating “beans and wieners” as a child – baked beans with chopped up hot dogs mixed in, for the unschooled.  In fact, he’d been craving this meal for so long that I finally broke down about a month ago and bought some nitrate-free hot dogs and bacon for the express purpose of recreating his salivatory memory. 

 

The baked beans came out so well that I’ve made them three times in the last month.  So I guess it’s time to share!  This recipe is adapted from one in Peace, Love, and Barbecue by Mike and Amy Mills.

 

Baked Beans

 

1 ½ lbs dried white beans (Great Northern, cannellini, navy, etc)

8 strips of bacon (nitrate-free)

1 small onion, diced

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups ketchup (organic, no HFCS)

½ cup molasses

¾ cup muscovado or brown sugar

2 tbsp prepared mustard

1-2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp chili powder

2 tsp paprika

2 tsp sea salt, finely ground

2 tsp pepper

 

1. Rinse the beans and soak for at least 12 hours (overnight), 24 hours if you have the time.  Drain the soaking water, then cook the beans in a crockpot on low all day or in a large pan on the stove (about two hours).

 

2. When beans are closed to being tender, cook the bacon in a skillet.  Once the bacon is fully cooked, remove it from the skillet and sauté the onions and garlic in the bacon grease until onion starts to change color (this won’t take long).  Remove from heat and let sit until the next step is completed.

 

3. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together remaining ingredients, plus the onion, garlic, and bacon grease from step two.  If you want to crumple the bacon, add it in at this step (otherwise, you can wait until it goes in the pan).

 

4.  Drain off most of the cooking water from the beans (you’ll want to leave a little bit to mix in with the mixture in step three), then go ahead and combine everything in the bean pot.  After it is mixed together thoroughly, pour into a 9×13 baking dish and cook in a pre-heated oven at 400 degrees until bubbly.

 

Note: You could definitely cook it at a different temperature – I just chose 400 because that was the temperature my cornbread needed.  You are going to eat cornbread with this, right?

Menu Plan: Week of April 20, 2009

This is our last week of being really busy for awhile. I have a babysitting commitment every single day, Husband is finishing his classes (with his Masters in hand), then we have six fairly easy weeks leading up to the summer break.  Needless to say, this week is full of easy meals:

 

Chicken tortilla soup

Baked beans, cornbread, greens

Lentil soup, leftover cornbread

My spaghetti, salad

Sesame ginger chicken, rice (held over from last week)

White chili

Hamburgers, oven fries

 

I’m also looking for a good dairy-free sourdough bread recipe, since I just got a starter from a friend.  I tried Sue Gregg’s sourdough spelt bread, but it was hard to follow and didn’t turn out well.  Any help is welcomed!

 

More menu plans at Organizing Junkie.

Garden Semi-Update

This is a semi-update because a lot got done today, but all for naught.  I intended to start more seedlings today with new soil because my first seedlings were overrun with mold.  I had reused soil from last year – apparently it wasn’t sterile.  So I took the kids to Home Depot, bought some begonias for my daughter’s garden, a bag of what I thought was organic potting soil, and two transplants (a tomato and a bell pepper) for good luck.

 

Turns out I grabbed some very much not organic garden soil – which I figured out after I’d already started 18 seedlings.  This time I was using toilet paper rolls as starter pots, and as I was labeling them, my eyes traveled back to the bag I had just finished scooping out of to notice this admonition: Use Gloves When Handling Soil.  Yikes!  Why would that be?  Because the soil was saturated with a bunch of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK).  And of course I was using my bare hands to set those seeds in the soil.  Yay.

 

So what have I learned about gardening so far?

 

1.  Use sterile soil when starting seeds, or else you get mold.

 

2.  Leave the 15-month old at home when buying things that are stacked next to really scary chemical-filled things.

 

I do have one happy piece of news: three (out of five) of the bare-root raspberry bushes I planted have started growing!

 

 

They were sticks when I planted them, now they have leaves.  Let’s just hope they actually fruit at some point.

Refried Beans: Easier Than You Think!

I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile, but I can’t ever seem to remember to take a picture.  Which is why I have no picture accompaniment – but I’ll add one next time I make this.  After all, Sarah asked for the recipe.

 

Let’s start by saying that I love beans in just about any form.  I’ve eaten beans nearly every day of my life, which is probably why many of my recipes involve them.  I used canned refried beans when cooking them until this last year, though, because it seemed easier.  Not tastier, though, if you’re used to the real thing – and when you’re buying the Amy’s brand, they can be pricey.

 

As with many things I post, this hardly seems post-worthy – but it’s easy, frugal, nourishing, and most of all, flavorful.  The spices really should be added to taste, so please adjust as needed or start with smaller amounts and taste as you go.  This is really just a guideline as to what flavors should be present.

 

Refried Beans

 

1 pound dried pinto or black beans (or mix of both – but the black dominates)

Pinch of asafoetida or epazote

¼ cup olive oil

1 small onion, finely diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander seed

Salt and pepper to taste (I use a lot)

 

1. Soak beans for 24 hours (or overnight if that’s all the time you have).  The next morning, drain soak water, add new water and a pinch of asafoetida or epazote, and cook on low in a crock pot all day until dinner time.  Don’t add any of the other seasonings yet – the salt, especially, will slow down cooking time.  (You could also cook the beans in a pot on the stove; adjust cook time accordingly.)

 

2. Heat oil in a large pot or Dutch oven, adding the onions when hot.  After onions have softened, add garlic, cumin, and coriander and sauté about two more minutes. 

 

3. Add cooked beans, salt, and pepper.  Mash the beans (still in the pot) with a potato masher until they look the way you like them – Husband prefers not to see a lot of whole bean, so we mash quite a bit – and taste for seasoning.  I’m always needing to add more salt here.

 

Notes:

 

- Chicken broth could be substituted for the water during the bean cooking step.

- If you opt to cook the beans on the stove instead of the crockpot, just sauté the onions and garlic in a small saucepan then add them in with all the seasonings to the cooked beans.  I’ve done this before and it works fine.

- I’ve tried to make this entirely a crockpot thing, but it never seemed to taste as good.

 

So what’s next?

 

Well, following my obsession with sprouting, I’d love to come up with a sprouted and refried bean recipe.  I don’t imagine it would change much except in the cooking time.  So expect that to come soon.

 

Also, I would like to try making them with lard – the most traditional preparation.  I don’t, however, have access to high quality lard (just the hydrogenated stuff at the store – yuck!), and I haven’t yet tried to render it myself. 

 

How do you make refried beans?

Part of the Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap.

Butter, At Last!

Every now and then I skim the cream off my raw milk to make butter.  But something always seems to go wrong, and I give up for a month or so.  The first time I made it was the best – I put all the cream into my Bosch mixer, ran it on speed 2 (out of 4), and after an hour (of mixer noise!) finally got butter.  The lesson I should’ve taken away from that was next time, run it on a higher speed.

 

I tend toward airheadedness, though, so I decided that next time I would use a blender or food processor since it might work better in a smaller space.  Well, I tried both of those with no success – just a splitting headache and an irritable husband afterward.

 

Last week I decided to save the cream from two weeks’ worth of milk and try again in the mixer at a higher speed.  I used to get a gallon per week, now I just get half a gallon, so there’s really not enough cream in a half gallon to make it work.  And all of those things together were magic – after half an hour I had butter!

 

 

(Ignore the indentation from my fingers – I was too excited about this to smooth it out before I took a picture.)

 

I’m not going to give a tutorial here about how to do this, since I’m definitely not an expert.  But if you Google “how to make raw milk butter,” you’ll find plenty of resources.  I let mine sit at room temperature on the counter for 12 hours (which is supposed to improve the flavor), but other than that, I followed the general instructions.  Now I need to figure out what to do with the leftover buttermilk, since I can’t cook with it (on account of D’s allergy).  Anyone want some buttermilk?

Menu Plan: Week of April 13, 2009

In that particular is contained the universal. – James Joyce, on writing about Dublin.

 

I’m beginning to wonder why I post my menu plans every week – they’re an important part of my home management, but I’m not so sure they make great reading.  Most of what we eat isn’t terribly exciting, unless (like me) you find beauty in things simple and quotidian.  Too much of the same is boring, though, and it keeps me accountable to tell the internet this bit of business.  So for now, the menu plans continue.  This week is full of chicken…

 

Roast chicken, baked sweet potatoes, green beans

Sesame Ginger Chicken, rice

Turkey pumpkin chili (yes, I still have pumpkin!!)

Beef or bean tacos, refried pinto beans, Mexi-millet (or quinoa)

Sausage and bean soup, cornbread

Mediterranean chicken, salad or wilted greens

Hamburgers with sweet potato fries

 

Really, I’m not trying to compare myself to Joyce – my menu plans are not the Rosetta stone to unlocking all of humanity’s secrets.  What we are eating does, however, make a statement about who we are and what we value.  Which means I’m probably going to turn into a hamburger or sweet potato fry anytime now…