Happy New Year: Black-Eyed Peas with Bacon

Happy New Year! I made this side dish to serve on New Year’s Eve and Day for good luck. The bacon is perfect here to flavor the beans, and the hint of onion and garlic is excellent. You can also make this into a soup by adding chicken broth. Recipe from the Dec/Jan 2013 issue of Taste of Home.

Black-Eyed Peas with Bacon

1 lb dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and sorted
1/2 lb. bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 Tb butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
Salt
Additional crumbled bacon, optional

Put peas and bacon in large pot or Dutch oven, cover with water. Boil 2 minutes. Remove from heat, let sit, covered, 1 hour. Do not drain. (Or, soak beans in water overnight.)

Sauté onion in skillet with butter until tender, add garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Stir in thyme and salt, add to peas.

Boil. Reduce heat; simmer, covered, for 30 minutes or until peas are soft. Top with additional crumbled bacon.

Baked Beans, part 2

Hello, post #200!!

As a follow-up to my previous post on baked beans, this recipe I made for the 4th of July weekend.  I found it on Simply Recipe’s site again, and found I had nearly all of the ingredients it called for.  I initially wanted to make the Boston Baked Beans from my previous post, but we are in moving purgatory and I have no clue where my slow cooker is.  (My guess is that it’s in Missouri.  Don’t ask.)  Yes, I am aware that I don’t need a slow cooker for the recipe, but I wasn’t interested in tending to the beans all day on top of the stove.  This new recipe that I found is only supposed to take just under 4 hours, though the first time for a recipe always takes a bit longer.  I think my attempt ended up being about 5 hours.  Still, when I started the beans from scratch (dry), that’s pretty good.  However, I found the beans in this recipe rather bland.  Does anyone know if I should be adding salt to the water when boiling them during the prep process?  I wanted to (I always do for pasta, as it not only lowers the boiling point for the water but also gives flavor), but haven’t found any recipes that say to do that.  I may try adding some salt next time when I boil them.

Here’s the recipe, which you can find in its entirety here:

Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce

1 lb. dry Great Northern beans

1 T olive oil

1/4 lb. bacon, chopped

1/2 medium onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

1 T fresh sage or rosemary (I used 1/2 T dried sage)

1/2-1 tsp chile flakes (I didn’t have this)

2 T honey (the recipe suggests subbing molasses here, which I did to give a richer, sweeter taste)

1/4 cup tomato paste

1 15-oz. can crushed tomatoes

2 cups beef or chicken stock (I had beef to use up, though next time I would prefer chicken stock)

salt

1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley (I didn’t have this)

2 T balsamic vinegar

1) Pre-soak beans in bowl of water overnight.

2) Drain beans, put in medium pot and cover with 2 inches of water.  Boil about 1 hour, or until soft enough to eat.

3) Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  In dutch oven, heat olive oil and fry bacon.  Add onions, cook until tender.  Add garlic, chile flakes, and sage.  Add honey/molasses and tomato paste.  Add tomatoes and stock.  Bring to a simmer and add salt to taste.

4) Drain beans and add to dutch oven.  Mix.  Cover pot and place in oven for 1 hour 15 minutes.  Before serving, add parsley and vinegar.  Serves 8-10 as a side.

Great Northern beans, soaked, boiled, and drained

Bacon, onion, and garlic, oh my!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally, I would want my baked beans to have a more tomato/garlic flavor, and this just wasn’t quite enough.  Of course, some of that was due to me using store-brand ingredients.  But also, I would put in 2x the amount of onion next time, and a bit more garlic too.  In all, this was a good baked beans recipe, but still not quite great.

Boston Baked Beans (part 1)

My grandmother makes the best baked beans, hands down.  There’s no arguing there.  I’ve never had a better recipe.  It uses canned beans and quite a bit of molasses, brown sugar, bacon, and chili sauce.  Later on I’ll post her recipe, but first I wanted to talk about a couple of baked beans recipes I’ve tried on my own recently.  I really like the idea of making a bean dish completely from scratch, that is, from dry beans.  I found this recipe on the Simply Recipes blog, and it sounded fairly similar to my grandmother’s recipe.  Since I had a package of Navy beans from a previous recipe, I thought it would be a good way to use them.  This version uses a slow cooker.

Boston Baked Beans

1 lb. dry white beans (Great Northern, Navy)

1/3 cup molasses

1/3 cup brown sugar

3-4 T Dijon mustard

1/8 tsp ground cloves

3 cups hot water

1/2 lb. bacon, cut into pieces

1 medium onion, chopped

1) Soak beans overnight in bowl of water.  Drain.

2) Mix together next 5 ingredients.

3) Put half of the bacon pieces in the bottom of the slow cooker.  Layer with half of the drained beans.  Put all of the chopped onions in a layer, then the rest of the beans, then the rest of the bacon.  Top with the molasses mixture.

4) Cover and cook in a slow cooker on low for 8 hours or until beans are tender.  Best the next day.  Serves 10-12 as a side.

Are the beans done? I'm not sure...

Argh...I still can't tell!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problematic thing about this recipe was that it was in a slow cooker–it was hard to determine if the beans were cooking evenly.  I’m always afraid to take off the lid when a slow cooker’s going, since every second that the heat escapes means more cooking time is needed to make up for it.  So, I touched it as little as possible.  I tasted a spoonful at the end of the 8 hours to check and see if the beans were done, and the portion that I tested was done perfectly.  However, since I did not stir the beans the entire time, the ones towards the outside of the cooker were cooked, but the beans on the inside were still hard.  So, that was disappointing.  I think next time I’d just make these in a dutch oven.  I’d also add more onions, possibly some garlic, and also some tomato sauce/paste/chopped tomatoes.  Otherwise, this was the better of the two baked beans recipes I tried.  I’ll just need to practice being more patient when working with dry beans 🙂

Well, at least they came out looking good.

Holiday 2009

Okay, I know I haven’t posted in the past several weeks, though I have been cooking up a storm.  Unfortunately, I didn’t remember to bring my camera along with me over the holidays, so I you only have my word for it that my cooking was any good 🙂

As I’ve mentioned before, my fiance and I enjoy cooking together, so whenever we have a few days together we’ll choose something to cook.  He only has one cookbook (the updated Joy of Cooking), so we’ve done several recipes from there—even though the way Rombauer wrote her recipes are rather convoluted.  I prefer being able to have all the ingredients listed first, rather than boldface within the process narrative.  Oh well.  I was just impressed he voluntarily bought the cookbook when we were first dating, even though he didn’t know much about cooking, though I initially thought it was just to impress me 😉  (He confessed to me last week that he hadn’t been reading my blog…this is what happens—he gets talked about!)

Anyway, here are the last few recipes we’ve made together:

Spaghetti Carbonara, p. 329 in the 2006/7 edition of Joy of Cooking

(I won’t write the recipe here, as it’s easily available in that text.  Plus, the cookbook is an excellent basic reference to have, as it really is comprehensive.  It’s not as easy to follow as other cookbooks, but it is a useful resource.)

We tried this because we love bacon.  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s pretty much bacon and cheese folded into hot spaghetti that’s already been mixed with eggs, and the eggs have cooked when they came into contact with the hot pasta.  It was a very quick recipe—actually too quick, as we had to re-heat the pasta to make sure it was the right temperature in time for the eggs.  What slowed us down was the bacon—we chose thick-cut bacon, and I hadn’t figured on the extra time needed to fry it.  It takes about twice as long as regular bacon, but I didn’t notice a taste difference.  I think I would choose thick-cut bacon if I were to use it as a wrap covering a roast or a meat loaf, since it wouldn’t cook nearly as quickly as regular bacon does, and wouldn’t burn as fast.  But anyway, spaghetti carbonara is really easy, and it’s one of those recipes that after you do it, you don’t need the recipe anymore.  It’s pretty much (1) cook bacon, (2) cook pasta, and (3) mix raw eggs into pasta until cooked, then (4) toss bacon and cheese into pasta.  Plus salt and pepper, etc.  I’d do it again.

Chicken Rice Soup, p. 135

I really like chicken and rice in soup, and this recipe sounded good.  However, next time I would make the following changes—first, I’d use chicken stock instead of water, as that would help to give much more flavor.  Plus, cooking the chicken separately helps to avoid fat/grease in the soup liquid.  This recipe asks you to cook the chicken in water in the soup, but separating those steps would help to give it a better overall flavor.  Also, I’d add much more stock, as the 6 cups of water it called for wasn’t near enough to handle the measly ½ cup of rice added to the soup.  Now, we used regular white rice, not the long-grain white it called for, and so I’m not sure if that makes a difference.  I don’t know that much about rice so I can’t say if long-grain would take in less liquid than regular grain, but I’d both add more stock and add in the rice later on, not cooking it for 20 minutes.  Oh, and if I had wanted to splurge (I usually cook cheaply) I would have added in some green onions with the regular onion.  I added extra garlic, but it could have used more.  Of course, I always think things could use more garlic.  (This might be why I’m praised more for my writing than my speaking.  Huh.)  Overall I think I’d try this recipe again, with my modifications, or just find another chicken-rice soup recipe.  Kind of neutral on it.

Penne in Vodka Sauce, p. 328

We changed up several things about this one, such as switching spaghetti for the penne (again, I cook cheaply, and that’s what we had).  We also used regular milk instead of the cream it called for, and I think that next time I’d want to try it with cream instead, as this time it was too runny a sauce.  Either that, or use more diced tomatoes in it—it called for one can, but it didn’t seem as tomato-y as it should have.  Possibly adding a couple tablespoons of tomato paste would help with that.  Also, I couldn’t taste anything vodka about it either—not sure if that was the recipe, our ingredients, or what.  I might look for another recipe of this, because I’ve had it in a restaurant before and liked it.

We’re trying another recipe tonight for New Year’s Eve, spaghetti pie, so later on I’ll let you know how it turned out.  Happy New Year!

Update: Bacon Explosion

I’m just getting around to posting our experience with the famed “Bacon Explosion” recipe that we made over Labor Day weekend.  (For more information check out this past link).  I didn’t remember to pick up the camera, but hopefully we’ll make it again soon.

Basically?  I thought it was terrific.  My grandma makes an excellent sausage meatloaf, and this was very similar to that, except with the addition of bacon and the fact that it’s in a roll, not a loaf.  I was pleased with the recipe, especially after hearing some reviews of it that it’s too greasy.  I think that since it’s all sausage and bacon, it’s bound to be a bit on the greasy side–though there are lots of things you can do to it to make it less so.  I plan on putting the roll on a wire rack in the pan like a regular roast, so it’s not sitting in its juices while it’s cooking.  Also, if you made this and found it to still be too greasy, you could always use extra lean sausage, turkey bacon, or (preferably) use half beef and half sausage in the loaf.  I baked it in the oven (rather than do it in a smoker or on a grill like the recipe calls for), baking it at the usual time and temperature for a 2-lb meatloaf.  I recommend an instant-read digital thermometer for this kind of thing–I bought one at Wal-Mart and it’s been a terrific help.

Overall, it is an incredibly simple recipe, and I think there’s lots of possibilities for it.  I’ll keep it in my recipe file 🙂