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Amazing Beans

Wednesday, March 27, 2019 14:06

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You haven’t tasted beans until you taste heirloom beans. And if you haven’t gotten them from Rancho Gordo, then you still haven’t tasted beans.

Several years ago, when Anthony and I started moving towards more food security, food independence, and homemade food, one of the first things we got our hands on were dried beans. Beans are pretty much the number one food recommended to stock up on when you’re prepping your pantry. But, since I wasn’t exactly prepping my pantry with longterm goals in mind, I decided it was more cost-effective to get dried beans. And, since I was trying to eliminate canned goods entirely from our stores because of uncertainty about any BPH-lining in said cans, dried beans were the answer.

For years, I never even considered heirloom beans– not because I didn’t want to try them, but because I didn’t even know such a thing existed. The more I educated myself about food, the more I learned about heirloom and heritage varieties of a number of foods. I found a place that sold heirloom beans after I began the hunt for Canary Beans and Jacob’s Cattle Beans, two varieties I kept finding recipes for. When I read recipes for each I had to try them. The result? It’s really hard to describe, but they were nothing like the beans you buy in the supermarket– and even these beans, as good as they were, were nothing compared to Rancho Gordo’s beans.

And no, I have no connection to Rancho Gordo. Nor have I ever gotten any complimentary beans to review– although I wouldn’t be opposed. ðŸ˜Š

I won’t name the place I originally got the heirloom beans at, because I had a major problem with them, after being a customer of theirs for about a year. They were awesome, initially, in terms of having what they called heirloom varieties of legumes, rice, and quinoia. But, after making a pretty large order, never getting the few items that had been backordered, and never getting the credit for those backordered items, I had to fight for a refund with my credit card company.

I was pissed, not just at losing money, but I lost my hook-up to heirloom beans. So, I went back to the supermarket and when I wanted some organic black beans or organic chickpeas, I found some reasonable prices on Amazon. Then I started thinking bulk preps and ordered 25 pounds of pinto beans from Honeyville. While all those beans were decent, they weren’t heirloom. They were missing a quality and a flavor I was longing for. So, I kept hunting around for another place.

Steve Sando: the Bean Guru

What is an heirloom bean? A pretty decent discussion can be found here on Jamie Geller’s The Joy of Kosher. And, she highlights the only game in town on top notch heirloom beans: Rancho Gordo. Heirloom beans, like any heirloom seed, have been passed down from generation to generation, usually in family farms or gardens. Because of industrial farming, many heirloom and native food plants have been wiped out– either intentionally or because of cross-pollination, which contaminates the heirloom plant line. Many folks like Steve Sando the founder of Rancho Gordo, sought out small farmers with these prized family gems in order to revitalize heirloom beans, legumes, and corn.

Keep in mind, when I started my search this was quite a few years ago. Rancho Gordo isn’t a brand new company, but they really didn’t start kicking off until maybe 2007 or so. When I first started looking, this was a few years earlier. Now, if you do a Google search for “heirloom beans” Rancho Gordo is at the top of the results and you can pretty much get anything heirloom from the Amazon juggernaut, but sometimes the true heirloom nature is dubious.

After coming across a recipe for an heirloom variety I’d never heard of before, the Scarlet Runner

Scarlet Runner Bean

Bean, I stumbled across Rancho Gordo, a small farm network based in Napa, California, which as I said, specializes in heritage bean varieties and seeks to preserve rare, at-risk, heirloom varieties. And, with their Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project, they’re seeking to preserve traditional and indigenous farming techniques as well. Read more about Rancho Gordo and their story– and get your mitts on their beans.

I did find another heirloom vendor, Elegant Beans and Beyond, which also has some good legumes, but Rancho Gordo is my mainstay. Elegant Beans has some good beans, but I’ll save them for varieties I can’t get at Rancho Gordo, like Black Garbanzo or Jacob’s Cattle.

I can share a basic recipe that’s useful for any of the beans, but go to Rancho Gordo’s blog section of their site and they are the experts. I’ve tried several of their recipes and most are pretty simple. I just fell in love with one I’m planning for tonight.

The key with making beans is use the best beans, use filtered or bottled water (especially if you have hard water like I do in my new abode) to soak the beans, don’t toss the soaking liquid, and always make sure you have Rancho Gordo in your pantry, along with the basics for a mirapoix. Any mirapoix will do, French (carrots, onions, celery), Italian (garlic, onion, parsley, celery, carrot), or Creole (onions, celery, bell peppers). Any cook worth her salt should have a few of these on hand, fresh, in the fridge. Mix and match. Use what you have.

Another life-saver for cooking beans, and a whole host of other scrumptious delectables is a good stir-fry pan. I ordered one from Amazon and promptly returned it– the lid was a nightmare and it looked like someone had already used it and returned it. I found one in a store which I have completely fallen in love with: Cook’s 13 inch stainless steel with a stainless steel cover.

I found it for about $40 and it was the best $40 I’ve spent. Cooking greens in this is a cinch and cooking amazing beans? In as little as 40 minutes– without soaking.

Basic Beans

1 pound package of Rancho Gordo heirloom beans
2 stalks of celery, minced
2 carrots, peeled and minced
1 large onion (yellow or vidalia, but any will do)
3-4 minced garlic cloves
2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
3 cups of filtered or bottled water
Extra virgin olive oil
Crusty bread, rice, pasta, or some carb nummy that you can serve with the beans. This is optional. You can devour the beans as is with nary a carb in sight.

Rinse and sort the beans, making sure there isn’t any foreign material in the beans. Rancho beans are usually pretty clean, but every so often you might find a stone.
Soak the beans in the filtered water. This part is optional. I’ve soaked beans overnight, or soaked them for maybe an hour– or enough time to prep my other ingredients.
Prep vegetables.
In your stir-fry pan, on medium high heat, saute your onions in your olive oil until slightly translucent. Add your garlic, celery, thyme, and carrot. Saute for about 5 minutes.
Strain your beans but RESERVE THE SOAKING LIQUID!
Add your strained beans to the pot, stir to coat them with the oil and vegetables, maybe 2 or three minutes. Then add your liquid and slap the cover on the pot.
Lower the heat to medium-low and let the beans simmer for at least 25 minutes before checking them.
Once the beans are halfway cooked, then add your salt, pepper, and any other seasoning you desire. The key to getting tender beans is waiting until they’re at the halfway mark before salting or adding acid to the pot.
Slap the lid back on and check again in another 15-20 minutes. Once they’re near done, depending on how much liquid is left, you can simmer for the final moments with the lid off, in order to reduce the liquid further, or leave them a little brothy, especially if you’re serving them over rice, pasta, whole grains (quinoia, amaranth, wheatberries, and farro are amazing with beans).
Serve with a drizzle of olive oil.

The possibilities are endless depending on the type of bean and what you have on hand. I became a fan of lima beans because of Rancho Gordo. I grew up hating lima beans, probably because the only ones I had ever come across were the frozen horrors my mom would force us to eat. My husband loves lima beans and after initially discovering Rancho Gordo, I got him a package of Christmas Lima beans for Yule. I thought he’d appreciate the irony and he had just given me a mess of beans for my birthday a few weeks earlier. I’m not a jewelry and frills kind of girl. One year he gave me a Cherokee style war-club and I gave him chainmail; this particular year I got a mess of beans and I reciprocated.

Christmas Limas

The meal I developed around those Christmas limas was spectacular. I prepared them similarly to the recipe above, but I had some top quality, grass-fed jowl bacon from a local farm. I rendered the fat from that bacon and used the fat to saute the vegetables, first removing the bacon from the pan. Then, in the final 20 minutes of cooking, I added crushed red pepper, lots of black pepper, a small dash of ground and toasted cumin, chopped dinosaur kale– cleaned of course– and the previously rendered bacon. It was served with crusty bread, a squeeze of lemon, and shaved Parmesan cheese. I’ve had dreams about those lima beans.

Another memorable bean dish was something called Eye of the Goat, again following the basic recipe above, minus the carrots and celery, double the onions, which were allowed to caramelize first. They were served over amaranth and topped with lightly fried morels. To die for.

I haven’t restocked from Rancho Gordo in some time due to budget, but I’m making plans to do so as soon as humanely possible. I want to see how a dish of beans with some of my adult sprinkles (already-been-vaped cannabis) goes down. Sweet I imagine.

Eye of the Goat

Source: http://www.green-and-growing.com/2019/03/amazing-beans.html

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