From my pantry | Black beans

  I don't know about you, but we have a "food budget" in our house and we use a site to help us see if we are staying near our budget.  Unfortunately, the term budget is loosely used because we NEVER stay in budget.  For September, we spent an exorbitant amount of money on food, so much I am embarrassed to say.  And no, it was not because we ate out, we hardly eat out.  So last month, when I checked our budget 10 days before the month was to end, I saw that we were about $100 away from maxing out the food budget.  I put as much grocery shopping to a halt as I possibly could for the final 10 days of the month.  This meant scrounging through my pantry and making many pantry meals.  It gave me a wonderful idea for a blog series, and I was seriously proud of myself for what I came up with.  So here is the first in a weekly or monthly series, called "From my pantry."  And when I say pantry, it is my cupboard, freezer, and whatever lasts a long while in the fridge because things like carrots and cabbage are wonderful for my end of the month grocery store fasts!

 

  These black beans are not a new creation from last month, but they are a pantry meal and a family favorite so it was a great place to start off the series.  We started doing black beans and rice about once per week about 3 years ago.  We did it with the intention of less meat, cheaper meals, and thinking of the many people around the world who probably eat some sort of bean and rice combo as their diet.  If you are going to make this, just make sure you plan in advance if you are going to soak your beans.  I also tend to make "cheap" meals expensive, so I wouldn't say it is as cheap as it could be, but still much cheaper than many meals we make.

 

  These are fancy beans, dressed up with avocados, cheese, and greek yogurt most of the time.  We also bring out tortilla chips half way through the meal.  All of these things we always have on hand.  I make a big pot and then store the leftovers in jars and keep 1-2 in the fridge and freeze the rest.  We put the beans in quesadillas, burritos, snack on them with chips, or have a tasty midnight snack and make nachos with them.  We just basically always have them around instead of a standard can of black beans.

I have had multiple people ask for the recipe and I finally measured the ingredients and wrote them down.  So here goes.

 

Lindsay's black beans

 

2 cups dried black beans

3.5 oz. tomato paste (half a jar or tube)

4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped (approx. 2 Tbls.)

1 medium onion diced

2 roasted bell peppers, chopped

~13 oz. diced tomatoes (half of a box)

1 Tbls. cumin

1 Tbls. oregano

1 tsp. smoked paprika

2 Tbls. salt

1 tsp. ground pepper

 

1. Soak dry beans in water for 7 hours to overnight, about 3x the amount of water to beans.  Make sure they are completely covered.  I soak mine in the same dutch oven I will later cook them in.  (Why dirty another dish?)  If I forget to soak them overnight, I just start soaking first thing in the morning for dinner.

2.  Rinse beans completely.  Add 6 cups water to pot with beans.

3.  Bring beans to boil and turn to a low simmer for 1-1.5 hours.  Do not add anything to the water until after the 1-1.5 hour simmer.  Test beans for your desired softness at this point.

4.  Add in the remaining ingredients and continue to simmer for another 45 minutes to 1 hour.

 

Other additional things to throw in at step 4:

1 can green chiles

1/2 cup salsa

diced butternut squash cubes or other squash

 

From the pantry (pretty much this entire dish)

-dried black beans

-tomato paste

-garlic

-onions

-roasted peppers ( I always have these in my freezer.  We grew a bunch and roasted them, but I also will buy bunch at one -time, roast them and freeze them for this dish and other soups and stews.)

-diced tomatoes

-all of the spices (If you don't have smoked paprika, you should definitely get it.  It is not an expensive spice and it really is a special one.)

-green chiles

-salsa

 

Enjoy!