Beans, Beans, the magical fruit.
A case study in humility.
BEANS
They’re not like peaches or squash.
Plumpness isn’t for them. They like
being lean, as if for the narrow
path. The beans themselves sit qui-
etly inside their green pods. In-
stinctively one picks with care,
never tearing down the fine vine,
never noticing their crisp bod-
ies, or feeling their willingness for
the pot, for the fire.
I have thought sometimes that
something—I can’t name it—
watches as I walk the rows, accept-
ing the gift of their lives to assist
mine.
I know what you think: this is fool-
ishness. They’re only vegetables.
Even the blossoms with which they
begin are small and pale, hardly sig-
nificant Our hands, or minds, our
feet hold more intelligence. With
this I have no quarrel.
But, what about virtue?
Mary Oliver
(If you don’t know who Mary Oliver is, I highly advise you to look her up. Her poetry has inspired me more than anything else in the last few months)
Of all the things I have cooked over the years and grown an affinity for, beans are right up there. Growing up I ate a lot of rice & beans and to this day it’s something I feel I could eat every day. We ate them when I was a kid because we didn’t have a lot of money and my mother was a genius (as were most mothers of her era) at stretching a dollar to feed our family. It’s something she never really showed me how to make, unlike most other things, I don’t know what she did or how she did it. The pink beans, or habichuelas, were always my favorite. There were big chunks of potato and sofrito, and probably sazon. I was thinking about this last week when I tried to make some at work. I was making pernil( roasted pork shoulder) and thought habichuelas guisadas would be the perfect thing to go with it. That and maduros. But something odd happened. I couldn’t make them taste as good as my mom’s, no matter what I tried. “ I’m a chef! “ I thought. “ I have been cooking for 32 years, surely I can make some beans!”
Just typing those words makes me cringe. I guess humility goes out the window sometimes.You see, the beans came out okay, they were pretty good. But they were not on the same level as Mom’s. I assumed I knew better, assumed because I cook for a living that of course, I’m a better cook than my mother. I even remember her saying to me that she was tired sometimes and used canned beans and just doctored them up. Hers were still better, canned beans or not, as ego-busting as that is to admit it’s the truth.
Time and time again I have seen young cooks struggle with beans, mostly because of the same haughty attitude I demonstrated. “It’s just beans, what’s the big deal?” No one really cares about them the way I do., not sure why. Most cooks just throw the beans in a pot and cover them with water and walk away to start the next thing on their prep list. Which usually results in pretty bland boring beans. They are definitely not the money beans. The good as shit beans. The beans that make you close your eyes and feel your mama’s warm embrace beans. Beans that show you the way to bean nirvana. Their beans no one cared about. No salt and pepper, no sofrito, no love beans. I don’t like those beans. I want the give me the money beans. I want the beans with a capital B.
I always add oregano, ground cumin, ground coriander, dried oregano, pork fat of some kind, bacon or lard, and sofrito. Yes you can make vegan beans and I have many times, but there is no substitute for pork fat, quite honestly. You can substitute extra virgin olive oil for lard but that’s like watching a Martin Scorsese movie with the swear words bleeped out.
Beans are best cooked in a slow cooker or pressure cooker. Either way produces amazing results with little to no effort other than throwing the ingredients in a pot. And no I won’t be giving out any recipes. Cooking is about discovery. I will drop a few nuggets from my own experience. For the most part, I don’t soak beans unless they are huge, like Corona beans. I always add salt even though there’s a myth that it makes them hard if you add it too early in the cooking process. Pork fat, bacon, and smoked turkey add a lot of flavor. Depending on what you’re going for, cumin and dried oregano add flavor as well as rosemary and garlic if it’s more of a Mediterranean vibe you’re going for. If you feel like your beans are too watery I remove some, puree them and add them back into the simmering beans to give it more body.
I’d rather cook a pot of beans than more extravagant things, I find solace in humble things. I also feel many cooks overlook beans, many can cook a steak sous vide but are clueless about making a vinaigrette or a big pot of beans. Not all, but many. Maybe I was the same way and just forgot what it’s like to be young and have your whole career ahead of you. I remember a conversation I had with a chef I was working for in the 90s. We were talking about Bobby Flay, I loved his plates, they were so colorful. I was passing around his cookbook for all the other cooks to see, and the chef came and grabbed it out of someone’s hands. He paged through it and looked at me with contempt, “This is what you want to do? All this shit with squirt bottles? Squirt shit on a plate? Is that what you think a chef does?” I wasn’t sure exactly what chefs did all day but yes, I wanted to use squirt bottles to make goofy lines and squiggles on the plate. It was a lot more exciting than protein, starch, vegetable, and sauce plating we were used to. It was the 90s, and plating then was miles away from what it is now. (That last anecdote has nothing to do with beans but the 90s were like A Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For better or worse these were my formative years as a cook so I often refer back to odd stories like this one).
But I guess some form of recipe is in order even though it pains me to write one. I would suggest a ratio of five to one, water to beans. I usually add a bay leaf or two. I usually add sofrito ( onions, peppers, garlic, and tomato cooked down to a paste), dried oregano, cumin, coriander, salt, and pepper. Or you could just skip all that and add Goya sazōn as a lot of people do. (I’m not a big fan of Goya but to each his own). I like to add a smoked ham hock, bacon, lard, or even smoked turkey for some smoke flavor as well. Bring to a boil and simmer until beans are cooked through. If beans seem watery or dry, remove about a cup and puree them in a blender and add them back to the pot, it will help thicken them and give them a nice texture.
Always happy to see you writing.