Smooth Beans for Braedyn

Braedyn, mashing black beans for Smooth Beans

One of the most fascinating and fun aspects of having an in-home daycare is that our vocabulary has been expanded greatly by children's interpretations of words, pronunciations of words and uniquely childlike names for items.  We especially enjoy the various names for foods, even though food names have not always meant actual food.  One little one, Tinsley, said she was afraid of tomatoes hurting her, which confused us until we figured out she meant tornadoes.  We learned that when Austin referred to "pie-man" doing something, we should RUN immediately toward wherever he was, because Austin-as- Spiderman was about to scale a wall or bookshelves or sail through the air with his pretend webbing to assist.  Quite a few gray hairs later, I'm so glad he outgrew that phase!

On a less heart-stopping level, though, real food names that were given other names by children are those we continue to use way past when they stopped doing so, to the point of eyerolls.  It is our right to embarrass them, no?  I mean, once one has changed a child's diaper, isn't there that entitlement?  We don't call strawberries that name, anymore.  They're "gars, daw-bews, or tarberries" (Bonnie, Bonnie, Braedyn).  Music of any kind is "meeka" (Jordan) or "gick" (Dylan).  Socks are "goks" (Jordan).  Another such re-name is "smooth beans," a favorite four-year-old's name for refried beans.  I like "smooth beans" a whole lot better than the supposedly correct name, which does not translate properly into what they are, anyhow.  Refritos are not truly fried at all.  They're mashed in a skillet with an abundance of animal fat added for flavor, but that's not frying.  Smooth beans describes them perfectly.

This blog entry today is for you who've either never cooked dried beans, or if you've been miserably unhappy with the results.  If you read my entry on accidental-on-purpose bean dip, you'll know that after decades of bean cookery, I still mess up sometimes.  I do try to work with the mistakes if at all possible...or bury them deeply in the compost pile!  No need to hash over failures.  I mean, really!  Today is a new day.  We start afresh.  Besides, even a total bean mistake is a cheap mistake, so experiment freely.

Here's my first piece of dried bean advice:  throw away the clock.  I mean it.  Don't ask me how long the beans will take to cook.  I don't KNOW how long.  Every variety of bean is different.  Every bag of beans is different.  Every municipality's water is different.  Every slow cooker is different, and don't even get me started on the new slow cookers that run so hot they can hardly be called "slow," anymore.  Age and moisture with each bean is different.  All of these factors, some unknowable, help determine just how long a bean will take to soften properly and turn into lusciousness.  It is one of life's little mysteries.  However, there is one reassuring fact:  the bean will tell you when it is done.  There will be no doubt.  I suggest you plan the meal intended to use the beans AFTER they're done.  Blessedly, most cooked beans keep nicely refrigerated for several days, or can be frozen for quick meals later.  This is particularly true with Smooth Beans, as the texture does not suffer with rewarming.  They're already very nearly a paste.

For your session of cooking Smooth Beans my way, I advise choosing a day when you'll be around the house with a flexible schedule.  Set the beans on to cook early evening of the day before that.  The beans may be ready the following morning, and they may not be ready until late the following night.  Be prepared for that, and don't count on the Smooth Beans for any of your meals in the interim.  If the beans are done before that, then that's a pleasant surprise.  Have I said this enough to drive my point home?  Be patient with the beans!

Oh, and don't worry about the gas factor.  If you cook the beans thoroughly enough, you will do away with much of that.  This is not the time to think raw foods, or even cooked to crisp-tender.  Not to digress too much, but it is actually dangerous to eat some beans that have been insufficiently cooked, especially kidney beans.  If you want to look it up someplace, have at it.  In the meantime, just trust me and let your beans COOK THROUGH. 

Additional aids to good digestion are pure commons sense your Mama taught you if you were raised in the south.  Keep mealtimes pleasant and strife-free, relax and eat slowly, chew with mouth closed, take small bites and chew each bite well WITHOUT washing down half-chewed food with a beverage.  These motherly mandates are not merely good manners.  Following them helps avoid swallowing air with the food and allows the saliva time to partially digest it before it gets to the stomach.  This means the stomach and intestines will have an easier time of it, which means YOU will have an easier time of it.  Also, drinking lots of water between meals is especially important when eating fiber-rich foods such as beans. 

Hearteningly, the more often you eat beans, the more your digestive system will become accustomed to them and will process them more efficiently.  It's best to eat small portions of beans with other foods frequently, rather than eat none at all and suddenly eat a great quantity of beans all by themselves. 

Another tip to head off possible bean digestive problems is to sip a cup of peppermint, lemon balm, ginger, fennel or anise tea immediately after a bean meal.  These are all carminatives, which is a fancy-schmancy word that means they cut down on heartburn, bloating and farts.  There, I've said the word.

No matter what anybody else says or does, please DO NOT pour out and change bean soaking or bean cooking water at any point, and do NOT add baking soda.  You're wasting or destroying significant amounts of nutrients either way.  Don't we need all the nutrients we can get?  Isn't that why we're eating beans, besides the marvelous flavor, that is?  I say open a window or go take a walk if it gets too odoriferous and let's get over ourselves.  What's a little methane amongst friends?

My recipe for  Smooth Beans is fairly simple and is typical of other refrito recipes I've seen, except for the much lower fat content.  I've substituted meat stock for some of the fat generally used.  I've seen recipes that call for as much as 1/2 cup of fat with 30% fewer beans than in mine.  That is insane!  Not to mention, the extra fat makes the beans harder to digest, and at no beneficial trade-off.  The meat stock gives enough flavor that the fat is not missed, and the beans are far more digestible and healthful for the body.  Not that I always care deeply enough about that issue to avoid something scrumptious, but I try to make good food choices now and then.  I'll save my fat calories for where it counts, like butter on my bread!

For those who are texture-sensitive, like some four-year-olds, these smooth beans have no discernible bits of anything but bean in them.  This is intentional.  The garlic will cook into a puree even if it is in big chunks, but the onion will not unless you chop it finely and exercise some restraint on quantity.  The oregano leaves disappear.  If you're interested in a chunkier, spicier bean dip with recognizable "stuff" in it, do a search here for my "bean dip."  The Brae's Smooth Beans recipe produces nigh unto a baby food-textured paste, which is precisely what that little cowboy wants.

Barbara G's Somewhat Virtuous Refried Beans (aka Brae's Smooth Beans!)

3 cups dried beans of your choice (pinto, cranberry, mixed beans, black)
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 large sprig fresh oregano or about 1/2 teaspoon dried leaves
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup concentrated meat stock (1 cup normal strength reduced)
1 tablespoon rendered meat fat (chicken, beef, pork, bacon, sausage)
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon jalapeno pepper sauce
1/4 cup milk
salt to taste

Sort through the beans and toss out any deformed or broken ones, or any non-bean oddities you may find.  Rinse them thoroughly in clear water and dump into a medium-sized slow cooker.  Cover them to two inches above the beans with filtered water.  Add the bay leaf, the sprig of oregano, onion and garlic and nothing else!  Cook on High for two hours.  Open the lid and stir the beans to see if they need any water.  If they've swollen above water level or if they're so tightly packed in that they cannot move freely as you stir them, then add a little more water.  Don't be too stingy with the water at this point.  You can cook it all out later.  Now put the lid back on, turn it to Low, and don't even lift the lid for at least six hours or so. 

Cook the beans until thoroughly smushy done, no matter how long it takes.  It may take 10 hours; it may take two days.  It takes what it takes.  The beans are done when they have exploded themselves into the liquid and appear to have mashed themselves obligingly.  After about six to eight hours of cooking, open the lid, scrape the sides and bottom of the pot and stir it up well.  Taste a bean.  If it gives any resistance whatsoever to the tooth, keep on cooking them.  None should be entirely whole and none should be at all crunchy.  They should not make any sound on the spoon as your stir them.  Don't be gentle with the stirring.  You WANT them to fall apart into a mass of viscous mashed beans with a few barely discernible bean skins throughout.  If it's not quite there yet, but the beans are too thick to cook evenly, then add a little water.  At this point, don't add any more water than necessary, because what you add now will have to be cooked out in the skillet, which means a longer time of standing and stirring. 

What you will have to pay careful attention to at this point is whether or not you are scorching the beans.  This is especially true with the newer slow cookers that run so hot--grrr!  All I can tell you is to keep checking the beans often and keep stirring them up from the bottom and scraping the sides.  It may help cool it some to prop the lid up on a wooden spoon.  You may have to remove the lid entirely to keep it from scorching, and add more water to compensate for the evaporation if it's losing liquid faster than it cooks.  I've even added water in the form of an ice cube or two to slow down the cooking on a couple of the jack rabbit fast "slow" cookers.  A big clue that it's too hot is if the beans are at a bubbling boil on the Low setting.

Once the beans have fallen apart, fish out the bay leaf and the oregano stem (if you used fresh), and stir in the stock concentrate, meat fat, chili powder, cumin, pepper sauce, and milk.  Taste for seasoning, and add more if you want it spicier or hotter.  Do NOT add much salt, as the salt already in it will become more pronounced as the liquid evaporates.  Turn it all out into a big non-stick skillet, and cook on medium heat until the beans reduce into a thick mass about the consistency you'd want a good bean dip that won't break a chip.  As it cools, it will become much thicker so that it doesn't form a runny puddle on the plate, but sits up proudly instead.  If the beans are still too intact for your preference, then have at them with a potato masher until they are as pureed as you want. 

Do NOT leave the beans alone at this point.  Even with a non-stick skillet, you will have to stir the beans almost constantly, scraping the bottom to keep them from sticking and burning.  This is especially true because we took out most of the fat in the usual refried beans recipes to make it a little better for us.  It is worth the trouble!  You won't have to stir for long, as it reduces fast.  Once it starts spitting hot bubbles at you with whooshing sounds like it's alive or something, it's ready. 

Turn off the heat and let it cool a little.  Taste it for salt now, and add more, if needed.  More liquid will evaporate off while it cools.  Continue to stir every few minutes to help it along, and to stir the drying surface back into the mixture so it does not form a "skin" on top.  Serve warm, but not piping hot.  Hot Smooth Beans mimic lava in their propensity to burn the flesh off your mouth.

Yield:  about 6 cups of bean heaven

To Serve:  Use pretty much as you would a dip with corn chips or toasted pita wedges or crackers, as a sandwich spread, rolled up in flour tortillas for burritos, as an ingredient of 7-layer dip, as a sauce for rice or happily straight out of a bowl with a spoon, a la one of our favorite four-year-olds--with or without a cornbread muffin.

To Store:  Refrigerate immediately for use over several days, OR dish up into meal-size freezer-safe storage boxes and toss into the freezer for impromptu snacks and meals.

Cost:  Depending upon the bean, anywhere from $1.50 to $2.00 for the whole big batch.  If you can get your ingredients at loss leader sale prices, even less!  I got my beans on close-out special for $.25 per 1-pound (2-cup) package, so with the other ingredients, mine cost a total of about $.75 for the batch.

One caution about using black beans in this recipe is that they are very strong-tasting.  Some may may experience it as a metallic after-taste, or as one certain four-year-old asserted, "It starts out yum, but then it gets disgusting."  So much for tact, but what do you expect from a pre-schooler?  His point is valid, too, because black beans contain a higher percentage of iron than many other beans.  I don't find the mineral taste unpleasant, but that's just me.  It tastes like cast iron skillets, which taste like home. 

Many traditional black bean soup recipes include carrots and a good many potatoes, and I suspect it's partly for sweetening and mellowing the iron afteraste.  On the other hand, for those who experience most beans as bland-tasting may prefer using black beans or even adzuki beans for Smooth Beans.  For one whose palate has been in this world a mere four-about-to-be-five years, pinto beans or cranberry beans are just the ticket.  No use rushing.  He has plenty of years ahead of him to try them all.

Frugally yours,
Barbara Houston Garrett
www.prepaidlegal.com/hub/barbaragarrett

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