TastyTalkWithAmy: Red Beans & Rice (Easy)

I just 'love me some red beans & rice'!

I love this meal! I have always loved this meal! Whenever I have made it for my guests it has always been loved too! I am always getting asked for the recipe. When I was a teenager living back in New Orleans for a time, my dad would make this recipe for the family and I loved it! I remember when I was a teenager and I had this little green cookbook with the blank pages so it could be filled in with recipes I liked. I still own that book that I bought at the Dollar Store, it says recipes on the side of it. I bought it with the intent of writing down all my favorite recipes that one day when I was married I would want to make for my family. This was one of those recipes I wrote down! I have been making this recipe now for 19 years and plan to make it for the rest of my life and for my grand kids one day and oh yeah, great for potlucks too! One more thing, the leftovers freeze perfectly for a future meal.

1 lb small red beans, approximately 1 bag

½ lb ham hocks or smoked ham

1 lg yellow onion, peeled & chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

3 tbsp parsley (fresh or dried)

½ green pepper, chopped

1 or 2 bay leaves

2 lg cloves garlic, crushed

2 sticks butter (I used unsalted)

pepper to taste

salt on individual’s bowls

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Tabasco to taste

Cooked white rice

Soak the beans overnight in ample water, 8 hours tops, no longer, after you have soaked them and if you don’t need to prepare them just yet, then drain the excess water and put them in the fridge until you are ready to cook them. When ready to cook them, add the ham, onion, celery, parsley, bay leaves, green pepper and garlic and add enough water to cover the contents and about 1 inch above that. Bring to a boil, then turn to a simmer. Simmer uncovered for 2 hours, being careful that the beans do not stick or become too dry. You may have to add a little water and stir every so often so that they do not stick to the bottom and burn.

After the initial 2 hours of cooking, add the butter, pepper, Worcestershire and Tabasco to the pot. Continue cooking for 1 more hour, this time with a lid on the pot and the heat quite low.

Correct the seasonings. You may wish to add a bit of salt, but do not add salt until this point because salt cooks out of the ham hocks or ham and seasons the dish well.

Serve over white rice with French bread on the side.

This pot was filled to the top with water and over time it cooks down, it cooks even lower than this over the 2 hours and thickens as well.

These are the beans once cooked for the 3 hours total, see how much they cooked down and how they thickened quite nicely? You do not want them runny like a bowl of soup.

I soak my beans the night before in the same pot they will be cooked in. After they have soaked for 8 hours, drain the water and either cook or place in fridge until you need to prepare them.