As followers of my Instagram account (@madhuknitsandcooks) know, Sundays are often bean night in Casa Madhu Knits and Cooks. I like to soak dried beans on Saturday night, and then on a lazy Sunday afternoon, boil beans for an hour or two until they are perfect for dinner. The added benefit of cooking a big pot of beans on Sunday is that I have a protein base for meals for the first half of the work week as well.
I mostly cook chickpeas, red kidney beans, and black beans, and for some reason, pinto beans have never really been on my Sunday bean pot rotation. In fact, I am not sure if I have ever really cooked pinto beans from dried as opposed to using canned whole or refried pinto beans from the store.
Well, that gap in my bean repertoire changed when I got an America's Test Kitchen email about Tex Mex / Mexican favorites, including Drunken Beans. While their recipe calls for cooking the beans and vegetable / herb seasonings in bacon fat, I decided to try the recipe with olive oil. To my pleasant surprise, the recipe turned out so amazingly well such that my husband and I made this recipe our Sunday bean pot recipe for three consecutive weeks!
The beans this recipe produces are simply fantastic - perfectly creamy yet whole, tart from tomato paste, spicy from peppers, and nicely acidic and slightly sweet from the cooked down beer and tequila. I have halved this recipe to date, but moving forward, I will be going to the full 1 pound bean recipe.
To get started, you soak the beans overnight in salt water. You'll definitely notice that they get rehydrated and nicely plump by the time you wake up.
To make this modified vegetarian version, you then cook down the onion, poblanos, and garlic in olive oil.
Then to the pot goes the tequila until it largely evaporates.
Then add the beans and remaining seasonings to the pot, bring to a boil, and then put the pot in a pre-heated oven. Our friends at Cook's Illustrated reports that cooking beans in the oven allows for more even cooking and less blowouts, and in practice, that certainly seemed to be the case.
After the beans come out of the oven, you add the final ingredients - beer and tomato paste - and periodically stir for 30 minutes or until the flavors meld. Given the time in the oven and 30 minutes of stovetop cooking after, this is sadly not a weeknight recipe, but a much richer and satisfying ~2 hour cooking effort.
(beans out of the oven)
(beans cooking down with beer and tomato paste)
Serve the beans immediately with cilantro, and if desired, Cotija cheese. We've also put the cooked beans in corn tortillas for bean tacos, which is also a satisfying meal for days.
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