I have some canned three-bean and edamame beans that I was gonna fry up. I was gonna do a teriyaki sauce but I was wondering what you guys would cook them with?
Yes, I am once again asking for your bean recipes.
You really can't go wrong with that black pper a smidgeon of nutmeg and cardamom and cinnamon cayenne and allspice if you're not an allspice truther
Holy smokes that sounds delicious. I need to use allspice I have no idea how to
Smell it. Give it a little taste. Slowly add it to something. Hell steep a little in hot water and take a sip.
If you want to get good with herbs/spices first use fewer at a time, and really get to know them.
Can you learn to cook well this way or at some point do you need to learn the patterns in how spices and herbs balance each other out and play against each other?
I've always been a seat of the pants cooker and generally spice based on a very loose vibe I'm going for. I don't think I'm awful by this point but I'm in sort of the same place as I am with jazz - I can feel it out okay, but something tells me I really need to start learning some of the theory in order to keep improving at what I make.
Hmm that's pretty interesting. I don't think it's a good way to learn how to cook on its own, but if you can identify what most of the common herbs/spices smell and taste like, even being able to pick them out from a cooked dish, you're going to understand the theory a lot easier and more deeply.
So I'm basically recommending you do the cook version of ear training lol. It's probably the hardest way to learn how to play music(or cook), but if you already have a decent foundation in it, it'll definitely help you understand wth is going on. Otherwise its just pure sniff ideology? I think that applies lol
All just depends on what your goals are. If you want to cook the best stuff with the least effort, just find a few recipes you really like and try to follow the recipe exactly. I'm happy to go into more detail on what I think has helped me get better at cooking. I'm no expert and never had any formal training but I've tried pretty hard to get better over the last fifteen or so years lol. lmk
Thanks, I'm quitting my job in April so I'll start some tongue training then.
If you want to cook the best stuff with the least effort, just find a few recipes you really like and try to follow the recipe exactly.
This is actually the most effort for me. The administrative headache of trying to use up the odd extra amount of some perishable food while sticking just to a few recipes is too much. Two of the big reasons I'm an improviser is so I can throw in whatever needs to go and stick to buying whatever's cheap or in season (also two reasons why I lean towards soups a lot).
Lubya is a curry made with cumin and coriander seed, tomatoes and some ginger, garlic black pepper etc and it's pretty fire. It's made with just kidney beans but should be fine with a blend.
I've not found a tomato sauce where the beans don't improve it and they make a cheap nutritious bulk filler to make it all stretch further
Also, and I wouldn't have expected this, beans and pasta pair together insanely well.
Pasta e fağioli (pasta fazool for you philistines, excuse the accent btw - I'm dodging an overly aggressive auto-censor) and Pasta e Lenticchie are two examples of delicious traditional Italian pasta-heavy dishes which have legumes as a feature.
I strongly recommend trying them. They're great if you adapt them to being veg dishes too.
Make a salsa with tomatoes jalapenos onions and garlic and have them in that
To be fair. Red beans are common in Asian desserts. There is probably a way to make edible beans with caramel sauce. Any murican who grew up on Bush’s baked beans already likes beans in syrup anyway.
I am genuinely unable to finish a serving of baked beans I do not like this
I just opened up the one can of "baked beans" i have laying around and a huge chunk of the can't volume is syrup i bet if you kept draining like 25%
I like the classic red beans and rice: Hot sauce, cayenne pepper and thyme is a strong combo of spices, especially over a base of onions, green bell pepper, celery, garlic and tomatoes.
This screams Tex-Mex chilli to me but it would lend itself well to legit Mexican just as well.
Alternatively, if you have a broad array of spices then you could make it into something South Asian. I'm going to assume that you're using ground spices here and say that if you wanted a sort of freestyle South Asian bean dish then you could start with a finely chopped onion (use a grater or even puree it in a blender if you prefer), a teaspoon of minced garlic and a teaspoon of minced ginger with a minced green chilli or some green bell pepper (can also be pureed with the onion), if you don't like too much heat.
Soften these over a medium heat using oil (ghee is ideal but use what you've got), but avoid too much browning. Add in some chopped tomato of some kind (canned, fresh, a puree). Maybe 200g or so (about 7oz). If you're re using tomatoes that come with a lid, you can hold plenty in reserve and add it a bit later if you want your dish more tomato-y.
Cook this for a few minutes (fresh tomatoes might take more like 10 mins), then add a small pinch of turmeric (optional), ½ to 1 teaspoon of a mild red chilli powder (to taste, substitute for sweet paprika if you don't like heat or you aren't sure about how hot you want it to be and add in some chilli later), about 1 teaspoon of garam masala, 1 teaspoon of ground cumin, 1 teaspoon of ground coriander (optional), and salt to taste.
Cook this down until it starts to get kinda clumpy and dry, where the oil you started frying with is separating out from the tomato mixture.
Add in ½ to 1 cup of hot water and stir it to recombine the mixture. Rinse and drain beans, add to the mixture. Taste for salt and adjust your heat and tomato-yness now if you're uncertain about how hot you want the dish. Feel free to add in extra spices at this point and let it simmer for say an extra 5 mins if you do so. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves (cilantro), some fresh tomato, lemon juice, fresh ginger etc.
You can also add in other vegetables, such as potatoes or carrots or peas (or basically anything that you have lying around in your fridge) if you like. For harder vegetables like potatoes, add them into the dish when you add water to rehydrate and recombine the tomato mixture, then simmer until the potato chunks are softened through.
For me beans generally get some cumin, chili powder, hot sauce, fat, and a bit of MSG, and wind up in a tortilla
I wish I could find some MSG. Is there another name it goes by?
do not cumin.
