The Muddy Kitchen: Easy Beans

Beans are not hard! Well, they are at first, but then you cook them, which is not hard.

The day before I know I'm going to make something with beans, I buy a bag of them at the store and bring them home. As I put them in the pantry, I think to myself, "I'll get started on those beans early tomorrow! Dinner will be a snap!".

The next day, and this part is very important, I totally forget to cook the beans. Or worse, I remember to cook the beans several times, but decide to keep doing what I'm doing at the time, instead of starting them. Somewhere around 3:00 pm, I think, "Oh no! I need to get those beans on!" and find a big pot and lid.

Easy How To: Fill the pot about 3/4 with water, put a lot of salt in, and dump a bag of beans in, after rinsing them off. (When you're rinsing the beans, check for and remove little pebbles or weird screwed-up beans.) Crank the heat up under them. Let the water boil for a couple of minutes, remove from heat, and cover. Go back to forgetting about them until around 4:30 or 5 pm.

If you have other prep work to do, this is a good opportunity for that.

For the pictured dish, I chop a couple of onions and green peppers, and mince some garlic.

After a while, remember that the beans still need to be cooked and put them on low-medium heat and keep it there for another hour or so. Add water to keep the beans immersed, if necessary.

Here's more of what I did for the pictured beans and rice dish. I learned it from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. In your biggest pot, heat a few tablespoons of oil and sautée the onions and peppers in cumin (at least a few tablespoons) until they're getting soft and the onions are almost translucent. Add the garlic and cook for a couple of minutes. Then, dump in a couple of cups of brown rice and twice as many cups of water. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Here's where I add the beans that have been cooking. May as well let it all cook together in the same pot. I don't even drain the beans first. It all goes in! Aren't you glad you used the big pot? I cook it all until everything is tender, turn off the heat, and stir in two cans of coconut milk.

Then, serve massive amounts of it to some delightful children. You can skip that step, but I don't recommend it. I think this sight really brings out the taste of the cumin.

This dish is a hit in our house. It's cheap, it's easy, and it makes top-notch leftovers. The kids sigh about how much they love it and groan about how full they get from eating it. My ulterior goal is to teach them to cook it for themselves before they leave home for Their Adult Lives. On my mental list of survival recipes, this is at the top.