Yeah, but Would You WANT To...?

[lydamorehouse]

 'Yeah, but would you want to...?" has always been the question I have asked myself about the general prepper/apocalypse planning advice that says: "You can live on rice and beans forever! Plus, they're easy to store!"

Like a good liberal prepper, I did, in fact, stock up on dried beans even though my family currently eats almost ZERO meals that involve ANY kind of bean beyond those you would throw in to make a good chili. Rice I already had a lot of around, though I did buy more when it came time to lay in stores. The rice, I've been using steadily and have, in point of fact, had to replenish a number of times.

The dried beans? They're still just sitting there. 

So I am determined to use these apocalypse beans up. I feel, in some way, that my using up the apocalypse beans will herald an end to the pandemic... or, at least my willingness to not feel like I have to have some kind of white knuckle fear that it may NEVER end. (Don't tell me how wrong I am, okay? I need any shred of hope I can cling to.)

This is a long way of getting to the fact that yesterday I cooked up a mess 'o beans that was (and still is, as I am having it for lunch) DELICIOUS. 

This recipe is not for vegans or vegetarians, however, as it is the classic ham hock and bean pot. The cool thing, however, was because I was going to simmer this pot in the oven for four to five hours, I didn't even bother soaking the beans overnight. I just threw a half a bag of pinto beans in with the soup stock and ham hock, onions, and bay leaves, and walked away. Obviously, this is not quite apocalypse fare as in a lot of doomsday scenarios (as opposed to the one we're living) since, if you are hunkered down in your bunker, you can't just go out and get a ham hock. Ours was left over from a Honeybaked Ham that we bought for Christmas Eve dinner that I threw in the freezer. I mean, this did a lot for cleaning out my freezer? And, I am surprised how delicious it is. (To make it slightly MORE hearty, I also threw in some brown rice that I had also over stocked for the apocalypse.)

If you are a meat eater, I highly recommend. Though I suspect you could do something similar with vegetable stock, beans, onions, and rice?  Feel free to chime in, if you have a good recipe--because I am bound and DETERMINED to eat up all these beans!!

Comments

[dreamshark]

Thanks for the reminder that it is actually possible to cook dried beans from scratch. We have a lot of those sitting around too, some of them possibly left from my co-op days 30 years ago.

Speaking of co-op days, I vaguely recall that the go-to fix for making vegetarian soup taste like something other than hot water with rewarmed vegetables in it was brewers yeast, which I assume you can still buy at co-ops. Does anybody still cook with brewers yeast?

[pameladean]

I cook with nutritional yeast, which may or may not be the same thing.

But it's really much easier to use a commercially made broth paste that has yeast in it. I use Better Than Bouillion No Chicken or, if that is not available, Vegetable, Base. It comes in little glass jars and is quite strong, so it can last quite a while.

Nutritional yeast is nice if you are trying to make a vegan cheese sauce or a pot pie gravy, but I personally don't find it works very well in soups. It may just be that I don't have the knack of it.

The bean dishes that I make generally call for either a little Liquid Smoke or some toasted sesame oil to make up for the lack of smoked meat flavor. There are also a lot of really delicious vegetarian mock sausage products available, and some of them even stand up to long cooking.

P.

P.

[lydamorehouse]

I have Brewer's yeast in my pantry, and I have put it into some things the way Pamela seems to talking about putting Nutritional yeast into things. I have not yet googled to see if there is any real difference. They do seem to function similarly, however.

Liquid Smoke is an interesting idea! I should have that around since I failed my other vegan friend (besides you, Pamela,) and added Worcestershire sauce not realizing is made of tiny fishes. :-(

[quadong]

We, too, have dried apocalypse beans. We do use beans on a regular, although slow, basis, but always from cans, because no matter how long we soak and simmer dried beans, they are always too crunchy at the end. I keep meaning to try to figure out what we're doing wrong, or if we're just too picky, so maybe I should follow your lead and use some of these beans up.

[lydamorehouse]

I have had some success reconstituting beans in the traditional overnight soak way, but I do highly recommending slow cooking the beans. I have read that it depends on the bean?? I used dried pintos for this recipe and they came out very much BEAN by the end. I wonder if this is less true for garbanzo or kidney.

[offcntr]

I seem to recall that adding a little baking soda to the cook water helps? I'll have to check in my Good Eats books when I have a minute.

[brin_bellway]

>>the general prepper/apocalypse planning advice that says: "You can live on rice and beans forever! Plus, they're easy to store!"

That's one strain of prepper advice. I'm more of the "store what you eat, eat what you store" strain, sometimes called "deep pantry" or--as I put it in the linked post--"rotated stockpiling". We're aiming for about three months' worth right now, but in a couple of years when my brother moves out we plan to turn the spare bedroom into an even deeper pantry. Maybe store some other prepping supplies in there too, depending on how things work out.

(That being said, it may be useful to combine the two forms of advice by considering "how easy would this be to stockpile" as a factor when deciding which new foods to try, at least if your capacity-to-handle-novelty is a resource as limited as mine. I just learned how great canned sardine fillets are, and I'm thrilled to have a source for tasty shelf-stable fish. (Unlike the rest of my family, I do not like canned tuna.) I bought twelve, and I'm gonna buy more once I've gotten a sense of how often I eat them. Also, they have good sales!)

Our deep pantry has been very helpful for dealing with the erratic supply chains of a pandemic. To give the most recent example: up until this week, there had been no store-brand stovetop popcorn at the grocery store for nearly three months. If my stockpile had been any smaller, I'd have had to shell out for the name-brand stuff that costs three times as much. Instead, just as I was scraping the bottom of the barrel it came back in stock, and I promptly bought another seven kilograms.

[lydamorehouse]

Yes, I have tried to be deep pantry, too. I am just not great at getting enough of the stuff we use in great enough quantity?

I love your story of the popcorn, though. I want to be you.... instead I have too many beans no one will eat.

[brin_bellway]

>>I am just not great at getting enough of the stuff we use in great enough quantity?

In what way? I understand if it's not something you're looking to deal with, but if you're interested I might have some tips.

[transcendancing]

Nice work on your bean inroads! We do eat beans reasonably regularly, but my cooking has been less regular and so this is also a thing I have to do, and have not yet done. Your bean stew is inspiring! Although I live with a vegetarian and will have to seek out one of the other recipes I've got for beans that I haven't yet tried.