I'm Saucy!

This is funny because you may have heard that R&B song - "I'm Bossy." If not, just disregard the title. Vincent and I found ourselves in the kitchen singing "I'm saucy, it's the baddest beans around..." I said all of that to say this - Red Beans and Rice are a southern classic dish, which I like extra saucy! It also helps to have a saucy bean mixture when you're going to eat them with brown rice, because the rice is a little tougher than white rice.

There is something interesting that I took from a cookbook that my Mimi Lambert helped write many years ago in conjunction with her church. The cookbook, LaBonne Cuisine, follows many classic southern recipes and even includes some New Orleans favorites - such as Brennan's Restaurant Bananas Foster (YUM!) The cookbook had a small paragraph discussing the tradition of soaking beans overnight. Almost everyone soaks dried beans in a pot of water overnight to soften them in preparation for cooking the following day. Well, LaBonne Cuisine disagrees with that tradition because it is said to pull many of the nutrients from the dried beans into the soaking water. When the water is poured out and the beans are rinsed, many beneficial natural elements of the beans are lost. The cookbook suggests an alternate method, which is to simply cover the beans with water and bring them to a boil for 3-4 minutes, turn off the heat, place a lid on the pot and wait one hour. When time is up, drain and rinse the beans - and you'll have softened nutrient packed beans that are prepared to be cooked.

Now, if you're as southern as I am, you know good and damn well that red beans and rice include a big ol' hunk of pork sausage. Not in my kitchen! We are oink & moo free in the younger Procido generation. To many of my friends it may come as a shock that I have even gone this far...

 ... but give me a chance to explain. Turkey sausage is a lower fat, white meat option for recipes that call for meat to add a fundamental depth of flavor. This smokey turkey sausage does the trick! Not to mention, even to my surprise, it's quite tasty. (I know... I just said sausage is tasty. Forgive me!) Get a skillet going on medium heat, slice the sausage on a diagonal, and saute until browned. Sometimes a drizzle of olive oil is a good measure due to the low fat content of this sausage. Remove the sausage from the pan, and throw in the following:

2-3 stalks celery, scrubbed, trimmed and diced

1 medium sized white onion, diced

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

Salt and Pepper until the wafting smell hits you like heaven!

If you like, you can get this part going while those beans are soaking for an hour. By the way, this recipe calls for 1 Lb. of red kidney beans, I like Camilla brand.

Now, once you have the aromatics sauteed and the beans have soaked for at least and hour, drain and rinse the beans and throw them back into the pot along with the sausage, onion & celery mixture (you'll need a good sized soup pot for this!) Add the following ingredients for saucy red beans:

8-10 cups of water (watch the beans as they cook, adjust to your liking)

1 can of tomato sauce

2 tsp. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce

2 bay leaves

2 tsp. garlic salt

1/2 tsp. Tabasco (sometimes I add several more dashes of this later)

1/2 tsp. Cayenne pepper

Salt to taste (careful, the turkey sausage adds quite a bit of salt, so you may want to wait until the beans have cooked to add salt)

Bring the bean mixture to a boil and then cook the beans on medium heat or at a simmer for 2 - 21/2 hours or until creamy and tasty :) Add a small amount of chopped fresh parsley if you like. While you're waiting patiently for this scrumptious meal, or if you're Pepper - barking at the pot until it's ready, there is cornbread to be made. Red beans and rice wouldn't be right without cornbread! The Jiffy cornbread mix is a quick fix, and I like it just fine. However, this time I made some buttermilk cornbread from scratch, which was tangy, fluffy, and delightful. 

Also, for the rice - boil 3 cups of water with a sprinkle of salt. Add 2 cups of brown rice, stir, place the lid on, and cook on medium low for about 40 minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE LID before at least 35 minutes. The steam held within the pot is essential for fluffy rice. Once the beans are almost ready to eat, dump the rice into the beans and stir it up... yum yum yum!

And voila! Saucy Southern Classic... Enjoy :)