I found myself over at Robert’s food blog early Tuesday morning, around 9am. His last entry was for Red Beans and Rice. Since he’s in New Orleans and likes food I figured he’d have a decent recipe. I was inspired enough to spend my day going to three different grocery stores to find what I needed. You’d think Red Beans and Rice, how tough could that be? Well, decent sausage isn’t all that readily available in this part of The Bay Area. By 3pm I had everything I needed, including being at home.
Robert’s recipe will be posted at the end of this article so you can have it for your very own, or go to his blog and kahsnatch it directly.
Robert didn’t mention about roasting the chilis (he liked them rather than the traditional old bell type peppers), and the skins aren’t really digestable, so I decided to fire roast, then peel the suckers. I ended up with Pasilla peppers instead of the Poblano ones, they looked mildly heathier. It seemed odd for a mexican grocery to have manky poblanos, expecially this time of year.
Next came dicing up the vegies, peppers and chopping the garlic. Here I held pretty much to his recipe. Oh, except the 1 tsp. of oil. I used lard to grease the cast iron dutch oven and sauteed the vegies that way. Then I tossed in the sliced ham shanks. Sure I was supposed to blanch them, but I couldn’t bring myself to boil meat.
These beans have been simmering just over an hour and the sausages had been in for about twenty minutes or so. The sauce was thickening up nicely, but needed to reduce a bit. The taste seemed to be right on. Keep in mind, I’ve made plenty of bean dishes but never attempted a real southern one. So I had no idea what the final consistency was supposed to be.
The beans simmered until the sauce reduced a bit. I wanted enough of the sauce left for the rice to play with. That’s what it’s all about right? The beans playing with the rice! And you can’t play if you’re all dried out and funky.
I wasn’t able to take a picture of the final product, which at this point seems really stupid. Considering the shots I’ve taken so far. But I had two small children to bathe and get to bed while cooking and watching Jaime Oliver’s new series on Food TV while doing dishes. As a final topping I did get a chance to grind up a bit of the Viking Salt and sprinkle a bit over the top. Man, that really dialed it in. All in all it was a great success and a firm Thank You Sir! to Robert for providing the recipe.
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Robert’s Red Beans and Rice
When I cook red beans, I do a couple of things differently than some people. First, I’ve been using poblano chiles rather than green bell peppers for the last few years. It’s in this dish that I really started noticing the difference in flavor between poblanos and green bell peppers; the bell peppers – even organic – just seemed to have no flavor. Whereas the poblanos have a lot of flavor without too much heat.
The second thing I do a bit differently is that I add a couple of sliced, smoked ham hocks to the beans during the entire cooking period, and I add the (smoked) sausage during the last 45 minutes. I do this so that the hocks wil give up some flavor and gelatin to the dish, and to avoid over-cooking the sausage.
For one pound of dried red kidney beans, you will want:
1 onion, diced
1-2 stalks celery, diced
2 poblano chiles, seeded and diced (or 1-2 green bell peppers)
3-8 cloves garlic, chopped (depends on the size of the cloves, and how much you like garlic)
2 1″ slices of smoked ham hock (around 1/3 pound with bone, blanched for 10 minutes in boiling water)
1 lb. or so of smoked sausage (or andouille, etc.)
salt/pepper
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp. oil (peanut, corn, etc.)
water
Sort and rinse the beans.
Heat the oil in a large pot, then saute the vegetables until softened (10 minutes) on medium-low heat. Add the ham hocks, and continue cooking for 5 minutes or so, flip the ham hocks, and cook another 5 minutes.
Add the beans and thyme to the pot, then cover by one inch with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 45 minutes. Add the sausage, cutting it into 6″ pieces. Continue to cook on low heat for 30 minutes, then start testing the beans. Continue cooking until the beans are tender, (likely around 1 and 1/2 hours total), then season with salt and pepper, and use a wooden spoon to stir some of the cooked beans into the pot liquor to thicken it.
Serve with (real) rice.
Damn, that sounds delish. Is it possible to make this dish without meat?
yes! you can use something like the viking salt, or *gasp!* liquid smoke. because really it’s all about the smokey creamy texture flavors.
instructions are given at the bottom of Chuck’s Red Beans & Rice recipe:
http://www.gumbopages.com/food/red-beans.html
I’ve made this for vegan friends. They luuurved it.
Tell Chuck Kallisti sent ya!
eeek! there is a link there, it just disappears on the orange background. Just wave your pointer around till you find it.
must fix.
Very appetizing and mouth watering!
VIKING SALT RULES !!!! No meat was harmed in its making.
Looks pretty much perfect Biggles. I like the roasting of the peppers, too. I really just didn’t think about it. The poblanos I used seemed to be pretty thin-skinned though, so it didn’t affect the dish IMO.
The only reason to blanch a ham hock is to remove some of the salt. There are all sorts of theories about salt and beans, one of which is that salting beans at the start of the cooking process prevents them from becoming tender. I’ve read very good cooks and chefs take both positions, and I don’t really have an answer, but when I cook beans I generally leave the salt (and any acidic ingredient) out until the end of the process. The thing is, in order to get the good stuff out of the ham hock, you need to cook it for a long time, meaning it goes in at the start of the process. So, that was my reasoning, obviously your mileage may vary (and actually, the most important factor in cooking good, tender beans in my experienence is using beans that aren’t too old.)
Glad you tried the recipe out, and thanks for the plug.