As part of our challenge to spend less than $250 a month on food, I’ve been incorporating a lot of beans. LOTS. One of our new favorite dishes is sort of a mashup of three or four different recipes I’ve found for black bean stew.
By the way, I highly recommend Martha Stewart’s magazine, Everyday Food – it’s only about $10 for a yearly subscription and it’s worth every penny. I have enjoyed every single recipe I’ve tried from this magazine and I find them to be much more accessible than anything in her Living magazine, which I love for decorating, but I find it a little too “New England” for gardening and recipes. (Gardening in the south is just a different beast, where you’re more worried about plants burning than freezing, but I digress.)
Beans. Martha/Everyday Food have some great recipes for black bean stews, but I wanted to use my crock pot. It’s my favorite way to cook beans, since I don’t have to worry about burning anything. This version makes a big pot of beans – enough for stew one night, leftovers the next day, and enough leftovers to make four black bean burgers for dinner another night. Essentially three meals from ingredients totalling less than $7. See? These vegetarians are really on the right track…
Nikki’s Latin-ish Black Bean Stew
1 yellow onion, diced
1 lb bag dry black beans, soaked
1-2 bell peppers, thinly sliced (I prefer red, yellow or orange vs. green, but any will work)
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon butter (or olive oil if you want to make it vegan)
1 bag frozen corn (in a pinch you can use a bag of frozen mixed veggies – that’s what we had this time – the kind with peas, carrots, green beans and corn)
1 cans Ro-Tel
5-6 cups water
optional: grated cheese, fresh cilantro, greek yogurt or sour cream, hot sauce and diced avocado
optional: cooked brown rice
Sort and rinse the black beans and soak if you have time.
Warm butter/olive oil in a medium-large non-stick pan over medium heat, and add your diced onion. Cook for about 3 minutes, then add the bell pepper. Season with salt and pepper and cook until the onion is translucent and golden. Put this in your crock pot, then add your sorted beans and all the other ingredients. If you’ve soaked the beans before, use about 5 cups of water. If they were added to the crock pot dry, use about 6 cups of water (they’ll soak more up). Set the crock pot to low overnight or about 6-8 hours. It’s fine if it goes longer, since you don’t really have to worry about overcooking them in this recipe. When they beans are done, taste them and add some salt and pepper as needed. Using a slotted spoon, remove about 4 cups of beans and set them aside in a colander sitting on top of a bowl to cool and drain (we’ll save these for our black bean burgers).
For the remaining beans, use a potato masher to mash to your liking. I prefer a really mashed black bean stew – it’s kind of creamy and the bean broth really thickens up. But if you prefer more whole beans, then go light on the mashing.
Serve this over cooked brown rice and top with any of the following: grated cheese, fresh cilantro, greek yogurt or sour cream, hot sauce and diced avocado. This usually makes enough for large servings (or seconds) for 4 adults, or enough for two with leftovers the next day.
Refrigerate your reserved beans for dinner the next night:
Black Bean Burgers with pickled onions from issue #90 of Everyday Food, March 2012. Sadly, I don’t have a photo of these. We at them too fast. These are a bit more crumbly than the premade black bean burgers I’ve had in the past, but they taste great.
extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Reserved black beans from recipe above (divided, see below)
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
3/4 cup dried breadcrumbs (we used Panko, but any kind will work)
1 large egg, lightly beaten
In a medium nonstick skillet, heat 1 teaspoon olive oil over medium heat. Add one small red onion, thinly sliced and cook about one minute. Add 1 teaspoon sugar and cook until dissolved. Add 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and wipe out skillet. (*Do yourself a favor and make extra onions – they’re great on sandwiches and salads too).
In a large bowl, mash 2 1/2 cups of your reserved bean mixture. Stir in fresh cilantro, bread crumbs, egg and the remaining 1 1/2 cups beans (un-mashed). Season with about 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and form mixture into four patties. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in your skillet over medium-high. Cook two patties until crisp on the outside and heated through – about 7 minutes, flipping once. Repeat with more oil and remaining patties.
The original recipe calls for mayonaise, but we didn’t have any, so we made up our own dressing: about 3 tablespoons plain greek yogurt mixed with about two teaspoons Cholulah or Tapatio (or other hot sauce). Top with a little cheese, avocado and picked onion and you’re set.
Also, we didn’t have buns. But, we had been saving the “butt ends” of our bread loaves in the fridge to make croutons. We just toasted them and pretended they were buns.
