Bean Feast!

Bean Feast

If you cook a pound of beans perfectly and serve them for dinner with or without rice (I am an orthodox non-rice bean feaster) and with a modest assortment of toppings, then you will have tapped into the most inexpensive and supremely satisfying meal on earth—the original “bowl” before bowls were even a thing.

This is one of the most important meals I make when my kids come home now, even though when they lived here all the time they were so sick of it that I literally thought maybe this was them when it showed up in our local police blotter:

We’ve always called this dinner “bean feast” because it’s funny to sing “I want a feast. I want a bean feast!” with a snotty little English accent like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. But I just looked it up, and here’s this from Wikipedia: “A bean-feast, also known as beano in Britain, is an informal term for a celebratory meal or party. Historically it referred especially to an annual summer dinner given by an employer to their employees.” The appalling staff-appreciation event of yesteryear! BRING BACK THE BEANO! Or maybe don’t?

(If you are not following Phoebe Ward here, what are you even doing? She’s so incredibly brilliant and funny, plus she happens to be the daughter of my beloved Dinner: A Love Story, but doesn’t need to be. I mean, she needs to be, obvs, but you know what I’m saying.)

Bean Feast (not quite a recipe)
Serves 6 with rice or 4 without

The fun part of this meal is, of course, topping your own bowl of beans. These are the toppings I typically put out, but if you’re snowed in, just put out whatever:

• olive oil for drizzling

• flakey salt

• salsa, tajín, hot sauce (something smoky is nice)

• jarred pickled jalapeno slices or escabeche

• arugula leaves, cilantro, slivered cabbage, or pink slaw made with slivered red cabbage and the brine leftover in your jar of pepperoncini (give it a couple hours in the fridge)

• diced avocado (if we have it, which is only sometimes)

• lime wedges

• sour cream

• crumbled feta or shredded cheddar or Jack

And then there are the beans themselves. If you’re serving them with rice, you can get away with heating canned beans in their liquid, roughly 2 cans for every 3 people. But for the best beans in the world, start with a pound of dried pinto beans and pressure cook them. They’ll turn out creamy, fudgy, delicious, a little bit smokey and almost meaty. The beans you start with don’t have to be fancy! Sure, Rancho Gordo are the best—they really are—and I love them and order them regularly. But a bag of dried pinto (or black) beans from the supermarket is great too. The key is pressure cooking them, which you can do in your Instant Pot. (I’m not going to tell you how to cook them without a pressure cooker because, lukewarm take, it is not worth it.)

Here’s how: Pour the beans into the Instant Pot and pick through them to get out any stones and shrively beans and cat whiskers, etc, then generously cover them with water (by at least an inch or 2), add 2 or 3 tablespoons of salt, and bring the whole thing to a boil on the sauté setting (choose “more” if you’re offered such a choice). Once they come to a boil, turn off the heat by hitting “cancel,” pop the cover over them loosely, and let the beans soak for an hour or more. Taste the water and make sure it’s salty enough—add more salt if it doesn’t taste at least mildly salty.

After the hour of soaking, make sure there’s still water for the beans to boil in, cover the pot properly with the lid, and use the “beans” or “soup” setting to pressure cook them for half an hour. Allow the Instant Pot to release pressure naturally, which you’ll know has happened when the little valve drops. This will take around half an hour, but if you can’t stand to wait that long (BEANO!) then let it release naturally for at least 15 minutes before flipping the thing that will let the rest of the steam escape. The thing is called the “steam release.” Taste a bean to make sure it’s tender, then use a slotted spoon to scoop the beans into everybody’s bowls.

{Note: I more often actually use my stove-top pressure cooker, which looks like a futuristic robot from the 1960s and cooks beans in as terrifyingly little as 2 minutes.}

Stay warm, my lovelies, and thank you again, dear Phoebe Ward !

xo