Monday, May 24, 2010

Pork and Beans, 2 Ways

I LOVE pork and beans. It's a good thing Jesus said that it's not what goes in that defiles, but what comes out because I don't think I could give up pork. I make Mexican flavored pork and beans and I do it two ways: either as soup or as a main dish. Both recipes are cooked in the crock pot. In order to have a good pork and beans you have to have good pork. It must come from a "happy porker", as Miss Bates would say. ;-) If you live in the Charlottesville area I recommend getting your pork from Babes in the Woods or Polyface Farm.

My first try at this was making Chalupas from Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook. It was good, but called for Pinto beans. I prefer black beans so that's what I use. You can use either kind, but I wouldn't recommend trying anything other than those two kinds.

Here's the main dish recipe:

~ 1 pound pork (a roast of whatever cut). You can brown it if you want but you don't have to.
1-1.5 cups dry black beans soaked over night in 3 cups of water, or if you forget to soak them you can put them in a pot covered with about an inch of water, boil for 2 minutes, then cover and let sit for 1 hour.
The bean water
1 large onion or 1 bunch of spring onions with greens chopped.
2 garlic cloves or 4 garlic scapes minced or chopped finely
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt

1 tsp chile powder or 1 jalapeno pepper seeded and diced
1 small can of green chiles
Optional ingredients:
1 small green pepper chopped - I hardly ever have these anymore because they're only in season in the summer
tomatoes - any amount. I've use one 14 oz can or 1/2 a 14 oz can. You can add fresh, chopped ones. Whatever.
cilantro - you can add this dried while cooking or chop fresh and sprinkle it on top when serving.

Combine in crock pot and cook on low ~8 hours.
Before serving, remove pork and shred. Return to pot and mix.

You can serve this over rice or just on your plate with homemade bread. We recently had this with homemade bread and grilled asparagus and zucchini marinated in Newman's Own Balsamic Vinaigrette. Yum! You might like cheese or sour cream, too.W

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Here's how you do the soup.

You combine the necessary ingredients for the main dish as stated above. Then add the vegetables and water/broth called for in a minestrone soup recipe. You are not adding minestone soup spices or beans or barley or anything else...just the veggies.

For example, maybe you would add the following:
The bean water plus water or broth totaling 6 cups. I would wait until you add everything else to add the additional water or broth, just so that you don't accidentally overflow your pot.
2 carrots, chopped
1 additional onion, chopped
3 ribs of celery, chopped
1 small zucchini, chopped
fresh greens, chopped (as many as you want: chard, kale, spinach, etc.)
28 oz can of diced tomatoes or ~7 fresh tomatoes chopped.

Combine with other ingredients and cook the same as above. Don't forget to shred the pork. You can serve this soup over rice or with fresh bread.

You can make substitutions depending on what you have in the house. For example, keep celery in the fridge in the winter (because it's a cheap vegetable), but not in the summer (because there's some much else available). You can substitute Swiss Chard stalks for the celery, then chop up the leaves and add them, too. I think sweet peppers would work in this soup, any color. You could leave out the carrots and add the peppers, or use both. I have a feeling that okra would be good in this soup, too. It will make it kind of slimy looking, but that's just what okra does. I also bet that you could add winter squash to this and it would be tasty (I might add some cinnamon with winter squash). Green beans would be fine, too. Hmmm...maybe eggplant, but I'm not sure. If you try that and it's bad, I'm sorry!

I would NOT add broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, peas, asparagus, radishes, cabbage... that's all the veggies I can think of.

Enjoy!