Sorry I'm rambling. I just get so excited. Beans! I will say beans 18 times in the next seven
minutes. My name is Alison Roman and I'm here today to talk to you about my favorite thing
in the world. Which are beans. I feel like some people love to buy like a hat or a shirt or you
know a whatever souvenir and wherever they go, but I like to bring back beans. I brought back beans
from most countries that I visited. It is truly one of my greatest joys. 17, 18, 19. At least
19 types of beans in this pantry right now. Oop that's popcorn. All right that's not a bean. Beans
to me are like the thing that I will always cook especially if I'm feeling anxious because it's
like a pot of something I can throw on and I can season them with pretty much whatever I have
on hand. There's really no limit on how you can cook beans but I'm going to show you just like
a very basic, which happens to be vegan method to cook these beans. And then I'm going to show
you one of my favorite things to do with them, which is to spoon them and the broth over some
like really thick olive oil toast with an egg and some greens. This will be great. You may notice
that these beans are in a jar. They are dried. I have not soaked them. I will not be soaking
them. This is my hill to die on. If you soak them, your beans will be great, they'll be perfect
they'll be wonderful. If you don't soak them, your beans will be perfect, they'll be great,
they'll be wonderful. The time that you're saving by soaking them a day ahead is, that's 24 hours.
So if they take like an hour longer to cook now, you've still saved more time by
not soaking them. Soak if you want, don't soak if you don't. But moving forward,
this recipe sort of remains the same whether or not you've soaked your beans or not,
but these beans will never be soaked. So this is sort of like a basic sample of what's
always in my kitchen. I always have garlic. I always have lemons. And I always have onion or
shallots, but probably both. And then if you have any sort of like hearty spriggy herb, this is like
very sad marjoram, but it's gonna be happy when I put it in that pot with those beans. I like to
halve everything through the root like that, keeping the paper on so that way they will be
much easier to fish out later. I like my beans very lemony and with that comes the acidity
and the bitterness that you have in a lemon because we're gonna use the whole fruit. If you're
sensitive to those flavors, especially bitterness, maybe stick with a half or skip it all together.
Beans, alliums, lemon, herbs. I may throw in some chilies why not. You're gonna put more olive oil
than you think is necessary. I'm gonna put some now and then I'm gonna put some later as they
simmer and I'm probably gonna add more when they're finished. Um ow it bit me. You're gonna go
and cut side down. The herbs and the chili flake, I'm gonna add later because those don't need to
see any heat they're not gonna get seared for any reason. Probably cook that for like two to
three minutes. Maybe rotate some of those onions so they get color on both sides. There's no real
wrong way to do this and you can't really mess these up at this point. Again I'm going to stress
that this is not the only way to cook beans this is just how I cook beans. I do them in the stove
top although I also love to do them in the oven. We call those oven beans. You know. Ask me in a
year, I have a different bean method. Who could say? We could do beans part two. I'm gonna add
about half this jar, which is about two cups. Yeah I'm adding this is 24. This is three
cups. I'll probably add another three cups. To me beans are also a process and like I
said each bean kind of needs its own water amount and depending on the pot you're using,
depending on how rapidly you're boiling them, you may find yourself adding more water
throughout the cooking process, which is totally cool. I'm confident that I'll probably need to add
a little bit more water, but I like to start with less. One thing you do want to do is
you want to highly season the water now not so much like pasta water because it is going
to reduce and then you'll end up with too salty of a bean, something that I have experienced
more times than I could possibly count, but I feel like I'm getting out of breath
I'm getting so excited about these beans. Once we get it to a boil, I'm gonna turn it down.
You're gonna simmer these for at least two hours and I would say at the hour mark like you don't
ever want to see a bean not submerged in your liquid, so if it looks like there's an hour
left and you your the liquid level is getting dangerously low to the bean, you'd want to add
a little bit more liquid. There's so many bean myths. There's like things that people say you
always have to do or that you never should do. People always will say "Don't ever boil a bean."
It really depends on the beans. Some beans can take it some beans can't take it. Salting, some
people say "Don't ever salt your beans," because it toughens up the skin. I've never had that
happen to me. People will be like "Oh, add baking soda to the water, it'll soften the exterior
of the bean." Maybe it does. I've never had to do that if you're simmering for a bean, if you're
simmering for a bean, if you are simmering a bean and after three hours it's not done, throw those
beans away. They are not cooking. And I have done that. I have simmered beans in vain for like six
hours because I brought them back from some trip I went on and refused to cook them for three years.
Don't do that. If you bring your beans back from a trip, cook them. Cook them now. Yeah listen to
your body. If your body doesn't like beans, if it doesn't agree, then simply don't eat them. Okay
we are boiling. They're all floating. How cute. Um and then I'm just gonna turn it down to low. And
I'm gonna ignore these for at least an hour and a half but probably two. That's a lie. I definitely
will come and check in on them because I am an overbearing bean mother. Do you want to get
this moment? Where I talk about my bean stamps? Please mark this day as the last public day that
I'm ever allowed to talk about beans again. R.I.P. me talking about beans publicly. The word is
losing meaning I'm not gonna lie and uh yeah I'm gonna take this and not look at my phone.
I'll see you in an hour and a half to two hours. Hello, welcome back to my bean show. These beans have been going
for two and a half ish hours and I'm gonna turn it down all the way. I'm
going to eat the beans with some eggs. That's why those are boiling over there. And the best
way to tell if they're done or not obviously is to eat one. It's like pasta. When you taste
a pasta and it's not cooked yet, you know when it needs more time in the water. Same thing with
your beans. If you're at all concerned like they feel a little hard still keep simmering them. Add
more water if you need to. But these are done. As for the rest of the ingredients, you really
can use whatever is in your fridge but spinach, kale, mustard greens, Swiss chard, it doesn't even
have to be greens. I have this bunch of dandelion greens that I got at the market. This is just
like a classic crusty loaf of bread. I actually dug my hand into it earlier by accident, but
we're -- it's fine. Uh like an inch thick ish. There's like no faster way for me
to like get my heart rate up than slicing a piece of bread. Oh that's why I didn't
do that before, all right. Why is it so hard? I'm really struggling. I'm going
to cut it from this side because that side is damaged. I did it. Piece of bread.
Ah look how easy that was, uh, just kidding. All right we have beans. We have greens. We have
toast. We're gonna have toast. I'm gonna make it right now. You can make toast in a toaster or you
can make it in a skillet. One of the luxuries of living alone is that you can make toast however
you want and I do have a toaster and sometimes I find it useful but olive oil toast to me is such
a different beast, it's not even really toast, it's like fried bread. As for the greens, you just
kind of want to make sure that you're taking off any super like egregiously thick stems. I'm
just going to kind of rip them with my hands. That looks awesome to me and I really want to
eat that already. I'm just going to wilt some of these real quick in the same oil. I'm going
to stand back because it's going to splatter and then I'm going to add these beans. That tastes so good. It tastes so so good. It's
already really bright with lemon. It already has like heat from chili. It's perfectly
salted. I feel like I couldn't ask for a better bean so I'm just gonna spoon
the beans themselves over the toast and then pour some of that liquid over it. This
should be like more or less swimming in it and you should see like a noticeable pool of the
bean liquid at the bottom. I put parsley on probably everything, this is no exception. And
then if you wanted, which, I do want to put cheese on it. I'm going to do that too and then
basically just finish it with more olive oil. Beans really like olive oil. I'm ready for beans,
I'm ready for wine, it is night time so that's what's gonna happen. So thank you for coming
to my bean talk. I hope that I've convinced you to uh buy a bag of dried beans, even if it's
just like regular beans from the grocery store. I do cook with those all the time and they're
fantastic. And if the fire is ignited within and you decide that you just must explore the world
of heirloom beans then uh you can do that too. I'm not a hiker or like a hunter or an outdoorsy
person necessarily but this to me would be like what I would eat if I were. Like I feel
like this will keep me full for many hours. I'm gonna drink this wine, I'm gonna eat these
beans and then I'm gonna have beans for every meal over the next uh 17 days. I'm just
kidding. I'm probably gonna give some of these beans away because like
I said I think beans make a cool gift. So cool. This bean is called a Good Mother Stallard, wow!
