Red Beans & Rice with Smoked Sausage

[dailyrecipes]

Red Beans & Rice with Smoked Sausage


1 lb Dried red beans
1 ea Garlic clove chopped
1 1/2 lb Smoked sausage cut
1 ts Dried thyme
1 x Into chunks
1 ts Ground pepper
8 oz Smoked ham shanks
1/2 ts Sage
1 ea Large onion chopped
1 pn Cayenne pepper
1 x Salt
1 x Freshly cooked rice


Place beans in Dutch oven and cover generously with water. Let soak 30 minutes. Add remaining ingredients to beans except salt and rice. Bring to boil over medium high heat. Reduce heat to medium low, cover and simmer until beans are tender, adding more water if necessary (about 2 1/2 hours). Add salt to taste. Discard ham bones. Remove about 3 tablespoons of beans from mixture and mash to paste; return to Dutch oven and stir. Simmer 15 more minutes. Serve over hot rice.

[Daphne duLibre]

Red Beans & Rice is "poverty food" -- stuff I learned to cook as a starving college student. But it's source is black slave culture in the US, stuff that slaves cooked because it's what they had.

Accordingly, there's a lot of variation --

I always cooked the red beans and any meat as one dish, and then combined it with rice, the rice being an entirely separate dish.

I've always found ham hocks, a bit rubbery. Mostly they add a smokey flavor to the dish. You can get this with smoked ham, or smoked sausage.

I use a variety of pork ribs (boneless) or pork shoulder (boneless), but I brown this meat in the pan before I add the beans. Then I de-glaze the pan with beer/ale. But vinegar works here too. Vinegar adds flavor to beans.

My recipes -- not so much "recipes" as "approaches" and more intuitive than written down anywhere -- include pinto beans, kidney beans.

The secret to good beans is spice, and I add "Tex-Mex" varieties of peppers, jalpeno, and that whole litany of Texas/Mexican chili flavors.

I soak the beans overnight at least. The more they soak, the faster they cook.

[TomW]

Originally Posted by dailyrecipes

...1 x Into chunks
:
1 pn Cayenne pepper
:

What is "x Into"?

What is a "pn"

Tom

[Robo410]

betcha pn is pinch, and 1 x into is the sausage cut into chuncks, just on the wrong line.
beans are traditionally what the lower classes could afford and as they take flavors, one can spread a meagre bit of meat a long way. However, peasant cuisine has long been adopted by the gourmet beacuse it is delish and often quite healthy. I love beans and rice and greens. Sometimes I use canned if I'm in a hurry. THere are good sausages out there, and for those who don't do pork you can find great chicken sausage or smoked turkey legs to add flavor. Always start with a good sofrito! yum