On Cooking Beans

Two recipes! Choose your own adventure!

This is the Friday post for paid subscribers—a double feature, as it were! On Tuesday, all subscribers will get an essay on vegetarianism in which I document my obsessive quest to make vegetables taste like meat. Sound confusing and irrational? Tune in on Tuesday to decide for yourself!

Once upon a time when I was working full time, running a burgeoning food blog, training for half marathons, and being generally stupidly busy, I started making beans for dinner. As established, I have long been a lover of beans. But during this time, I nailed the recipe for what I started calling “brothy beans.”

Old-time photo of brothy beans, made with canned cannellini beans.

By “recipe,” I of course mean “general framework that can be modified to fit whatever ingredients you have on hand.” (Have you noticed yet that this type of non-recipe is my jam?) And now, this non-recipe recipe framework has expanded to include dried beans, which have taken over my cabinets and life as of late.

Beans can be a tough sell. Canned beans are not inherently delicious, so the most important part of this recipe is finding ways to supplement those flavors. Heirloom dried beans are much tastier, but they still need some help. Here are the components I add to every batch I make:

• Fat: The fat of this recipe is the solid foundation of what makes this so delicious. You start by sautéing the garlic lightly in olive oil, and you add glugs of olive oil as you go along until right before serving. If you're feeling particularly indulgent, you can use knobs of butter or even—gasp—chicken schmaltz.

• Salt: Beans need salt. Full stop. When I start with canned beans, I add salt at every stage of the cooking process for this recipe to make sure it really soaks in and flavors those lil bean babes. Note: I buy canned beans with no salt added. If you are buying beans with salt added, you may want to season them differently. I don’t salt the dried beans until well into their cooking process, but once I start, I really don’t stop. I also add salt by cooking the beans in broth, but you can just as easily make these in water. You can layer in extra umami/salt flavorings by incorporating Parmesan cheese, anchovies, or even an extra dose of the juice from preserved lemons.

• Acid: Adding a little bit of acid will make the creamy beans pop against the fat. I've used preserved lemon (so good), regular old lemon, and capers, but if you don't have any of those, you can use olives, oranges, or even limes. Go wild!

• Spice: We're big on spice in this house, so we use heaps of crushed red pepper and my friend Palita’s Nam Prik Pao, a Thai chili jam. I also love stirring in a tablespoon or two of Calabrian chilies. If you hate spice, don't add this stuff! Opt instead for oregano, thyme, bay leaf, and rosemary.

• Finishings: A non-exhaustive list of things I’ve plonked on top of a bowl of beans: quick pickled celery leaves, chili crisp, mountains of grated sharp cheese, dollops of sour cream and Greek yogurt, kimchi, olive tapenade, and fresh arugula.

Beans are my true love, and so much more delicious and versatile than people realize. I have already said many words about this, so all that’s left to do is give you these recipes and hope you join the cult of the beans!

One of the many iterations of said beans.