New Bean Recipe

I find it humorous that I chose to post about beans as my first recipe. For starters, it is one of the most unphotogenic foods you can find. I mean, they were delicious, but even with good lighting and at the right angle, this is not a supermodel-esque recipe. Secondly, it was about 80 degrees here today. Not really “bean” weather. But these were on my menu and by golly we were having beans. Lastly, and probably most humorous, is the fact that I don’t like beans. Never have. God love her, my mom would make beans (cue back to my first post, we were undoubtedly poor), and I thought they were awful and nasty and I hated the meat in them and I made it known that I didn’t like them (sorry mom, that wasn’t very nice in hindsight). BUT, I did find a good base recipe that I took my own spin on, and found these to be quite delicious. Albeit I think they’d taste better if it was cold and I was cozied up on the couch, but either way they’re yummy and easy, and what food better highlights my “beer” side…?

Ingredients (you’ll find this is not an exact science, just a starting point):

  • 3-4-ish cups of soaked beans
  • 2, 14 ounce cans of beef broth
  • 1, 4 ounce can of diced green chilies
  • 1, 10 ounce can of diced tomatoes with green chilies
  • 1 onion
  • sausage (I used elk meat Louisiana Hot Links Jared got from his uncle, not as spicy as they sound)
  • bacon (I used a package that Jared and my grandpa made)
  • 2-ish cups of water
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • garlic salt to taste

Rules of the recipe:

  1. This recipe actually started the night before (and a couple glasses of Rose later), I soaked the beans in a big bowl of water overnight.
  2. Actual day of the feeding: dice the onion, chunk up the meat (I didn’t cook the meat beforehand), open the cans of goods.
  3. Throw everything together in a pot on the stove.
  4. Let it simmer for a few hours (mine were on the stove for probably 5-6 hours), stirring occasionally.
  5. Add garlic salt/salt to taste about half an hour before you take them off heat and eat. I wait until the end because I don’t want them to be overly salty. You can always add more salt later.
  6. Wah-la. Chow time. Enjoy!

Notes:

These were very tasty, and have a bit of a kick between the chilies and the cayenne pepper. I liked that. I also like salty foods so I love being able to layer on the garlic salt at the end (garlic salt is, like, the best thing ever). I’m really weird about meat, I hate fat on any of my meat. Now this is terrible coming from someone who grew up in the cattle industry, I know it’s there for tenderness and flavor, but I just can’t do it. So I picked out some of the bacon, Jared’s win, those pieces got dumped into his bowl. Best part was, these beans are even Jared-approved. He can be a tough critic, so anytime I can fill him up and he likes what I make, win-win.