|
I won’t give you a recipe for it, as you can find hundreds of them on the Internet for free, but I’ll make some suggestions. Most of the recipes will call for you to start with what is known as the Trinity in New Orleans cooking, diced onion, celery and bell pepper. Most of the time when I cook this, I omit the celery and the bell pepper. There’s always garlic in the recipes, I usually add quite a bit more than what most recipes call for. I also add finally diced jalapeņos, to give the beans a nice background level of heat. I often omit the sausage and use smoked pork neck bones instead. These are cooked with the beans, removed and the meat taken from the bones, then added back to the beans. I often omit most of the dried spices, and I generally never add pre-blended Cajun spice concoctions. This ends up tasting less like something a Cajun might make but it’s a pretty darn tasty version of pork and beans. I generally serve it with diced green onion tops, or maybe some sour cream.
Make sure you use the proper red beans and not kidney beans.
You can cook it low and slow, or cook it in a much higher heat and keep adding water as you cook, to keep the beans just barely covered.
Soaking the beans ahead of time is also not absolutely necessary.
I generally like it better without the rice, but I eat it both ways.
|