Are you trying to eat healthily? Need comfort food? Worried about added sugar and other additives in commercial brands of beans?
Here is a simple recipe to make your own.
I never weigh or measure for this. A mugful of dried beans should serve 4
Step one: Start the day before. Put dried beans into a bowl and cover with cold water. Leave to soak.
Step Two:
Drain, cover with fresh water and bring to the boil. Turn heat down and simmer till soft.
(It is possible to by pass the first step and cook from dried in a pressure cooker - that needs a bit of practise with the timings!)
Step Three:
Gather all your ingredients together
Chopped onion, carrot, celery leaves if you like, Sundried tomatoes (optional)
Tinned chopped tomatoes ( in the summer you can use fresh) Tomato paste (optional), dried orange peel, bay leaves.
Olive oil
A splash of vinegar ( any type)
Salt, pepper
teaspoon of sugar - optional
Step Four:
When beans are soft drain - reserve the cooking liquid. (Do not do this for red kidney beans)
Step five: sauce the onions in a little olive oil. If you wish caramelise them by adding a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of vinegar. ( Leave this out if you are trying to cut out all sugar - but it does help bring out the flavour.)
Step Six:
Add the carrots and mix with the onions, then add the other ingredients. Adjust to your taste - add a spoonful of tomato puree if you like things very tomatoey, leave it out if you don't.
Step Seven: If you need extra liquid add a little of the reserved water from boiling the beans. Bring to the boil and then simmer for about 15 minutes.
Step Eight:
Add the beans, return to the boil and then simmer for 40 minutes alternatively put into a casserole dish, cover and bake in the oven at a bout 180 C. (the longer and gentler the simmer the better the flavour will be!
Step Nine:
Adjust seasoning to your taste
Step Ten:
Serve and enjoy. This will be even better the second day!
No comments:
Post a Comment