No food represents Appalachian cooking more than the humble pinto bean. Known as soup beans to most of us around here, these yummy legumes are filling, affordable, and easily stored which made them an excellent choice for our ancestors who passed this dish down generation after generation. As a child, I alternated between eating them with gusto and turning my nose up at them but distance does make the heart grow fonder. I remember many occasions of asking my mom if we could have soup beans on the weekends when I’d come home from college. It’s amazing how much better they tasted to me as an adult.
For such a simple food, beans can be intimidating to cook. My husband loves pinto beans and in our early years of marriage, I prepared beans from a can. They were ok but not the real thing. After listening to me whine about the substandard quality of my canned beans, my mom said “Well, cook the real thing!” I decided to go for it and now we have a big pot of beans almost every Sunday in the fall and winter.
Soup beans are traditionally served with cornbread (soup beans without cornbread is just unheard of) and popular side items are fried potatoes, sauerkraut with cut up wieners or Polish sausage, macaroni and tomatoes, greens, or salmon patties.
I remember my mom buying Peak brand beans but now I find mostly store brand dried beans in supermarkets. A suggested serving of dried beans is about 1/4 cup which of course expands greatly when cooked. I eyeball my measurements but if you are new to cooking beans, measuring them out is a good place to start. I usually allow for a 1/2 cup per person because we like to have leftovers and beans reheat well.
Your first step is to check your beans for rocks. I used to find that fascinating when I was small (this was before cable and the internet, don’t judge). Nowadays, you don’t find a rock very often in your dried beans but it does happen. I’ve noticed some store brands are more prone to rocks than others. After you feel confident your beans are free from rocks, you need to soak them. There are two methods. My preferred one is the overnight soak. Place your beans in a heavy pot (I use a 3.5 quart cast iron pot similar to this one) and cover with about an inch of water. Let soak over night.
Sometimes the need for beans strikes and you don’t have all night. In that case, you can do the “quick soak” method. Prepare your beans as above and bring them to a rapid boil for about 2 minutes. Then turn the heat off and let the beans sit for an hour. I personally think the beans get softer with the overnight soak but I’ve done the quick soak method on occasion and your beans will be fine.
Your soaked beans will be about double in size. Give them a good rinse and also rinse out your bean pot.
Next up is flavoring your beans. This is traditionally accomplished with some sort of pork product such as bacon, salt pork, or ham. My favorite is ham such as leftover baked ham but my husband doesn’t care for ham so I generally use bacon or salt pork. Pour your beans back into the pot, add enough water to cover them with about an inch and a half of water, and then add your flavoring. You’ll also want to add a pretty generous dash of salt. For this batch which started with about a cup and a half of dried beans, I added about 1/4 teaspoon of salt to start then adjusted with more salt as the beans cooked.
Bring beans to a boil, cover, reduce heat to low and let them simmer for an hour and a half to two hours or longer. Keep a watchful eye on your beans to make sure that they don’t cook dry and run out of water. If you need to add more water during the cooking process, use hot water so that it doesn’t slow down the cooking too much.
Beans, like pasta, can have varying degrees of “doneness”. I prefer my beans to be soft enough to take on a “broken” look but still maintain their shape. Other people will cook them until they are much softer.
We eat our beans on a plate but many serve them in a bowl because of all the soupy broth. I crumble my cornbread into the beans but my husband eat his straight with the bread on the side.
Beans reheat well and leftovers can be used for burritos or made into refried beans. My husband’s grandfather used to talk about his mother making “bean cakes” with leftover beans. These cakes were pretty on par with today’s black bean burger.
So if you’ve been afraid to try cooking dried beans, don’t! It’s super easy and nothing tastes more like home if you’re from Appalachia.