D.Katie Powell Art

Finally received the box of beans from Rancho Gordo…
Been reading about them, and now I had to have beans…
a staple during this damn Rona visit.

I started with 1 lb of the big fat White Lima beans.
They would tell me what I needed to know,
because if they were not THAT GOOD, then why pay these prices?

OMIGODDESS, THEY ARE THAT GOOD!
Not my mother’s bag-o-beans!

What I did with them?
One goal: I wanted to see how little meat/fat I could use and still have an
excellent savory pot of beans better than my mom used to make.
She used a whole ham hock or ham bone!
We are cutting back on meat, paying a bit more to buy
organic/non-GMO and Certified Humane
and so this was an experiment.  It worked!
(List of ingredients below.)

Rancho Gordo has a lot of info about cooling beans on their site.
After washing and making sure no stones were in the bag,
I soaked mine for 2 hours in my Dutch oven, covered about 1 inch,
and used the water as they suggested as part of the cooking.

I used just 4 oz of good certified humane bacon from Niman’s Ranch,
(about four pieces of bacon)
chopped in bean-size bites and fried crisp in a small pan…
I added a bit of the stock and scraped the bits to make the beans taste even better,
and added the garlic and peppers and set aside.

I made a soffritto**
(See below, because I have been making this my whole life and just learned the word!
Who new I was this fancy?)
I sauteed the onion to make it a bit sweeter.
Then in the hot pan (fire turned off) I added the carrots and celery.

I then put everything into the pot, with the seasonings and stock and
another cup of water… I wanted liquid, which they call pot liquor…
and as Rancho Gordo suggests, I turned up the heat and let it have a rolling boil
for about 15 minutes, then turned it down to simmer.

Our pot of beans was done within just over an hour…
I watched it every 15 minutes after the first half-hour because the beans looked
like they would cook faster than an older bag of beans, and they did!

Amazing heavenly hot spicy limas with
the flavor of a whole ham and yet, very little meat!

Ingredients:
1 lb Rancho Gordo White Lima Beans
4oz Niman’s Ranch Certified Humane bacon
I qt chicken stock
1 T chopped garlic
(I keep Christopher Ranch organic bottled on hand;
I think it is almost as good as fresh)
4 heaping T Blackened Chili Pesto or a couple blackened hot peppers, chopped
1 large RED onion, chopped (that was what I had on hand)
3 carrots, chopped (if huge then quarter and chop)
3 stalks celery — leaves welcomed — chopped
Seasonings: Only 1 t garlic salt (I don’t add salt until the end), 2 T cumin, 1 T pepper,
and as we like heat, 1 t dry crushed chipotle chili peppers
(we should have done more peppers for us).
Later, salt and pepper to taste!

Always organic or non-GMO, humanely raised. It matters!

** (We go to Wikipedia under mirepoix): A mirepoix (/mɪərˈpwɑː/ meer-PWAH; French pronunciation: ​[miʁˈpwa]) is a flavor base made from cooked, diced vegetables, usually with butter, oil, or other fat, for a long time on a low heat without coloring or browning, as further cooking, often with the addition of tomato purée, creates a darkened brown mixture called pincage (French: pinçage). It is not sautéed or otherwise hard cooked, because the intention is to sweeten the ingredients rather than caramelize them. It is a long-standing cooking technique in French cuisine.

When the mirepoix is not precooked, the constituent vegetables may be cut to a larger size, depending on the overall cooking time for the dish. Usually the vegetable mixture is onions, carrots, and celery (either common ‘pascal’ celery or celeriac), with the traditional ratio being 2:1:1, two parts onion, one part carrot, and one part celery.^[1] Mirepoix is the flavor base for a wide variety of Western dishes: stocks, soups, stews and sauces.

Similar flavor bases include the Italian soffritto, the Spanish and Portuguese sofrito/refogado (braised onions, garlic and tomato), as well as the Turkish variation with tomato paste instead of fresh tomato of the eastern Mediterranean/Balkan region, the German Suppengrün (leeks, carrots and celeriac), the Polish włoszczyzna (leeks, carrots, celery root and parsley root), the Russian/Ukrainian smazhennya or zazharka (onion, carrot and possibly celery, beets or pepper), the United States Cajun/Creole holy trinity (onions, celery and bell peppers), and possibly the French duxelles (mushrooms and often onion or shallot and herbs, reduced to a paste).

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