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12 December 2007
Moros y Cristianos Give me your best hints for cooking black beans and rice. I like 'em spicy.
I’m so excited to see this question, I was just thinking about this a couple of hours ago. I can’t answer the black bean question, but one thing I’ll throw in is that my favorite restaurant meal anywhere is the garlic roast chicken dinner (with rice, beans, and fried plantains) at a small restaurant in LA called Versailles. What makes their side dishes totally sublime is getting some of the roast drippings (which have a very concentrated lemon/salt/garlic flavor, sharper than you might think workable) mixed in with the beans and rice and the (sweet, almost dessert-like) plantains on your plate. So if you have got some chicken stock lying around when you’re making the beans and rice you could make a really nice, complementary gravy with some lemon added in. I think you could probably get a similar effect with a vegetable stock.
This looks like a good mix - I particularly like the green olive idea. I'm going to base my dinner on this one and tinker around with the additions. For anyone who has the perfect BB&R recipe, though, don't let my impending dinner stop you from posting.
Sort and rinse black beans. Cover with cold water. Add 2 bay leaves, half an onion (don't chop it -- you're going to remove it later), a few cloves of minced garlic, and a couple of chipotles. Also, add enough salt until the water *almosts* tastes correctly seasoned. But be aware that the liquid will reduce and concentrate, so don't salt it to perfection. (And it's a myth that you shouldn't add salt to beans while they're cooking, by the way. Acid, no. Salt, yes.)
Bring to a boil, cover, cook until they're just short of done. At this point, remove the onion half. Chop the remaining, raw onion and a carrot, add to the pot. Add chopped tomatoes if you're in the mood, or browned sausage. Continue cooking until beans are tender.
Serve over rice and garnish with grated cheese, avocado, and good yogurt (or sour cream).
For an extra yummy twist, use quinoa instead of rice.
Had this for dinner the other night. Very yummy and healthy and comforting and waaaaaaarm.
Bless you, pup. Good tip on the quinoa, too. I had already started cooking the beans, but they're almost done, and I'm going to pick it up at the carrot stage. Am adding some sweet potato too. Thanks!
Oh yeah, forgot -- we had ours with some roasted sweet potatoes. And! Pumpkin seeds -- tossed with a dash of olive oil, salt, and chile powder. Toast them until crispy. (And when you remove them from the oven, they pop!)
pumpkin seeds are full of win! I put some in a salad tonight (romaine/pears/shreds of gruyere). The pears on their own were just not as awesome as I'd hoped, but they were just right for a salad with salty/savoury stuff in. Good balsamic helped a lot, too.
Thanks for the recipe, mudpuppie, I've some black beans I've been meaning to put to use. This will make a nice change from the plain old hillbilly black bean recipe I learned in my Ohio childhood:
I usually just cook 'em with some bacon dripping and Frank's Red Hot Sauce, add cumin and garlic, then top with shredded cheddar / onions / sour cream. We used to serve them over Minute Rice. *heavily buttered* Minute Rice.