I’m trying to incorporate more beans into my diet and am finding it quite difficult to get my beans the way I want them to be. I’m curious to hear your guy’s standard bean recipes. Do you guys use canned or dried beans? Stovetop or microwave? Any secret ingredients?
Here’s what I’d call my standard bean procedure.
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First, I start with canned beans. Dried beans are a bit firmer it seems, but I don’t feel like dried impacts the flavor enough to be worth the soak time.
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If I have it, I’ll grate half of an onion into the beans. I don’t like onion crunch.
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Microplane dried mushroom into it for extra protein and flavor
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Salt, pepper, granulated garlic, paprika and chili flakes. I don’t really like how garlic powder works with the beans and don’t feel the need for fresh garlic. Fresh ginger is really fire in it though. I add things on top of this usually for more flavor, but this is just my standard bean.
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Microwave for 3 minutes
I’d do more if it made a difference in flavor, but so far I can’t seem to make anything really make the beans pop. What do y’all do?
I do dried but that’s because I eat a lot of beans. Canned is honestly fine if you don’t eat a ton of them on a small scale purchase the savings are negligible and the extra labour is extensive.
Never heard of anyone cooking beans in the microwave, doesn’t sound great to me. Honestly the concept was distressing enough for me to double check that this wasn’t c/badposting.
For two large (596 mL) tins of your choice, fry up one large or two small onions, maybe 5-6 cloves of garlic crushed, a bay leaf, some peppers if you want some spice. If you have celery you can add a few stalks chopped finely. Fry until the onion begins to brown. You can add some other vegetable too at this stage, maybe some chopped kale or cabbage if you want. Even potatoes honestly. Certain vegetables will really take over the dish though, so I’d avoid broccoli, mushrooms, zucchini, etc. I add ginger sometimes at this step, sounds like you like ginger you should add it here, I just find its hard to control the flavour so I haven’t added it lately.
Add two tomatoes, chopped. Let it fry for a while.
Then drain and rinse your tinned beans, and add them.
Spice with salt and whatever spices you like. For straight beans I do white pepper, garlic powder, turmeric. Maybe a bit of cumin but just a small amount.
Some general tricks:
Beans can take a lot of oil. If you’re vegan fat intake isn’t really a problem for you so just go ham. Sometimes beans taste like they need salt but they actually need oil.
If you have red wine open and about, splash some of that in at the tomatoes step. If you don’t (this sounds crazy) but add some leftover coffee from the morning - it’s good and balances the flavours.
Adding some molasses to balance flavours is a good option, just be careful not to add too much.
mood! That shit was scary. Really eye opening to see the comrades in the comments who have reached a higher level of microwaving and beancraft.