Carla Makes Beans | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

meet my mom hey guys it's Karla I'm here in the bone Appetit test kitchen and I am going to make the perfect pot of beans beans are one of those things that I get questions about all the time how do you make them tender how do you make them taste good how to even make them not farty how do you make them not fall apart I want them to fall apart when do I put them in soup when do I do them on their own so many bean questions but for me knowing how to cook just the perfect pot of beans is one of those things that ones who know the technique you will make beans the right way for the rest of your life pache troffer the chef at Marlow & Sons in Williamsburg Brooklyn made the most incredible beans that my then vegetarian son not vegetarian anymore eight beans like I had never seen the kiddy beans before and Pat shared his method with me which really synthesized a ton of things first thing buy the good bean these are butter beans also known as baby llamas the method that I'm showing you will work with really any bean Gigante beans Corona beans would be a really good choice in this preparation the amount of time since they were a fresh bean too when you're buying them as a dried bean is that measure of freshness and it does really matter a being that's been dried for many years sitting in some dusty place and a dusty old supermarket is gonna take a lot longer to cook and is not gonna have as much flavor as a freshly dried bean once you've done that you have to soak your beans sorry but it's true the next best thing to do is to bring the beans up to a boil cover them in the cold water bring them up to a boil put a lid over them and let them sit for one hour that sort sort of mimics what happens in the overnight so for the overnight soak is better so you choose how do you want to be you want to be good to under the great cold water right out of the tap friends and I'm going to do a generous amount because this is also gonna be my cooking liquid that's another people ask all the time do i drain the beans if you cook it in the water that you soak the beans in isn't that why you get gas I don't know why you could get gas but it's not because of the beans soaking liquid so these we soaked overnight obviously yesterday was Sunday so you did this at your house Denise did this at her house that's real dedication right there but look at the difference unsoaked see how little they are same bean much plumper it's fully hydrated it's gonna help it soften the basic secrets to making beans are these three things salt fat and time that's really everything if you have salt fat and time you have everything you need to make an incredible pot of beans first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add some salt a lot of salt beans can take a lot of salt kind of like potatoes eggs rice other things that are very basic that people are very confused about and salting the water is a little bit like salting the water for pasta it means that the bean is gonna get seasoned heat medium high too high because I want to bring this up to a boil as it's coming to a boil I'm gonna skim off any foamy stuff that comes to the top totally normal anytime you see that foam rising to the surface that's just impurities it could be little bits of protein it could be other pieces of impurities that are breaking free and rising to the top and I don't really want them to be there the whole time which is why I will skip the temperature is going to go very low I want the beans to simmer incredibly gently the more they agitate the more likely they are to get smashed up against each other they will cook unevenly their flesh will break through their skin the cooking liquid will get cloudy and so once this has come up to a simmer lowering the heat and going really as as gentle as you can afford to go you can put as much or as little garlic as you want I'm gonna smash and peel of the garlic and then it's just like be in there the other thing that patch taught me when I emailed him and begged him to tell me what the secret of his secret pot of beans was he's salting at every step of the way that was one thing the other thing was he talked about the amount of fat that the man puts into the cooking liquid and he said an inch of a fat cat on top he uses whatever good fat he's got so olive oil you want something that tastes good right because if you're using that much it's really becoming a flavoring agent of your being and then it's just gonna make the broth that you get at the end so much more incredible but then he was like whatever rendered fat you happen to have lying around and for someone who is literally hoarding little jars rendered fat all throughout my refrigerator I mean you just couldn't tell somebody better news so in the optional category we have garlic lemon patch was like oh you know when you have a charred lemon lying around just throw that and I was like guess what I never have a charred lemon lying around but we're gonna make a charred lemon you could also just throw a whole lemon in you could throw some lemon peel and then herbs fresh herbs dry herbs and spices he likes coriander fennel and beans is really great together you don't have to add those I have oregano and mint today so I'm going to put those in he said if you don't have if you happen to have some confit garlic you could use that instead of the raw garlic but the raw garlic was totally fine and then really whatever herbs you have I mean rosemary thyme is great with beans sage but a little bit goes a long way and then these are more like in the oregano is kind of in the more oily hardy herb category and the mint is definitely in the fresh I'm not gonna chop them up or do anything I'm just gonna put the whole sprigs in and then he also recommended as part of his bean cookery practice adding the herbs a couple different times during the cooking so you get this like long cooked herb flavor then you get some right at the end let's see if we have foam oh yeah it's foamy now I now have turned these really annoying jingle for cheese glorious cheese into beans glorious beans in my head so sorry alright so we have achieved a simmer we've also achieved a good amount of foam so I'm going to manage both of those situations lowering the heat and just skimming this off it smells beanie in a great way so now that this is simmering I'm gonna char this lemon again extra but like why not and you don't really have to do anything just let them go and I'm going to add the oregano and again whatever herb you want to use is fine as long as you like the flavor of it and this is mint so some of the mint leaves and the oregano leaves are gonna break free and become one with the other being family and whichever ones don't you can just pull the sprigs out at the end if you want to be more controlled about it now adding two different kinds of poultry fat obviously you can make this vegetarian just use all olive oil and then to get that really generous fat cap that Pat's talked about I need to supplement with some olive oil so okay so when you get a can of beans you know you don't really use that liquid like nine times out of ten you are not messing with that being canned being liquid it just it's like very thick and kind of chunky but when you make your own beans this liquid is like magic sauce and when you finish your beans you might even have being liquid and don't throw that away because you use it for braces and for making other pots of beans salt more again salting as we go if you're using this is diamond if you use Morton's like use half the amount that you see me and just throwing about with abandon everyone who hates black pepper just went to a makeup tutorial they're done they're out of here all right these smell very different than they did when they were fresh dropping them in so this is a really exquisite situation that's going to cook for as long as it takes way that patch described it is that for the most of the bean cooking time you will feel like nothing is happening and that they will never be tender and they will never be creamy and they will never be done and then a magic moment will come when they are perfect and it's worth the wait every single time managing the temperature and if the water seems like it's gotten too low that Lake the beans don't have room to move around without broaching the surface then just add more water so in the meantime we're gonna make some toppings now I'm gonna make an aioli and I Olli is a homemade mayonnaise it's an emulsified sauce where you use an egg yolk and some garlic and olive oil to make a mayonnaise I just need the yolk is this tiny bowl big enough I think it's gonna happen yeah save your whites for making souffle whatever big pinch of salt okay here's our garlic as if there wasn't enough garlic you need the flavor of the raw garlic you know what I mean sometimes I always have lemon juice no splash water so the water is just gonna help with the emulsifying sometimes I always have lemon juice sometimes they have mustard those are all good choices you actually need a certain amount of available liquid for the fat to bind to so sometimes people will put their lemon right in the beginning the only trick with banking I Olli if you haven't done it before is that recipes are gonna say add the oil drop by drop it first and I know it sounds like an exaggeration but you really have to go drop by drop this is something you could make in a blender but every time I make it in a blender I screw it up so I always do them by hand I'm also comfortable making I oles so maybe I went a little bit faster than drop by drop so the beginning stage is important because that's when you're like establishing the emulsion and establishing the emulsion is basically the fat particles and the liquid particles being like okay fine I will bind to you whatever and then once they've all decided that they are going to be in that chemical embrace then everybody else should join this is like oh this is already an emulsion party I can just like jump into the situation so then you can go a little bit faster it's creamy it's not greasy or shiny and I'm not seeing like individual like slick of oil but if your emulsion breaks which would be so funny if mine does you can do it a couple different ways you can start over with a little bit of water and like a dab of mustard if you're fairly comfortable or you can start over with a fresh egg yolk and whisk the broken mixture into that egg yolk as though it were as though you were adding the oil from the beginning okay done hand blended aioli all right Iola is done I'm gonna keep that cold that's gonna get spooned in at the end let's check our beans chase the liquid and stuff beans are not done they're clacking around but I want to taste the liquid because if it's under salted now it's under salted forever it's across mmm bean tea drink up that is delicious okay I love it all right now I'm gonna make breadcrumbs because why not you would have stale bread lying around in your little cabin in the woods I'm just gonna tear it into kind of biggish pieces and then I'm gonna throw it in the food processor okay so again you don't have to make bread crumbs if you want to make beans all you need is the fat and the salts and the beans and the water and the time T IME large skillet a lot of different ways to make breadcrumbs this is just one of them another way would be to maybe toss your bread with the oil and put it in the oven but I'm gonna do it this way big pan medium-high heat when the oil is hot breadcrumbs are going in while we're here we can behold our beans they're beautiful so shiny all right oil is simmering yeah I think that was enough fat these are gonna be good so I'm just cooking them I'm making sure that they all absorb some of the oil until they get kind of toasty brown and crisp why am i toasting bread crumbs for beans texture is the answer just a little crunch [Music] bean time USA it smells amazing you can see what has happened the broth is still pretty clear it smells very lemony it smells very Irby the beans themselves are really very intact see a beautiful job of not over stimulating them does another trick I read that when the bean skin like curls back like that that that's how you know they're done I don't think that's true but it is cool they're totally creamy all the way through there isn't like a mushy part on the outside and then a tender part in the middle they cooked very very evenly I want to try that liquid to like my food could it be any bigger there's a little bit of you taste that like a little bit from the charred lemon like a little bit of bitterness and if you just recall or remember just keep in mind that salt sweet salt bitter are those four flavors that you want to have in balanced another thing that is gonna make these extra delicious is a nice glug of vinegar which I really love especially with beans so I'm gonna add that in this is great with any like lentils are so great if you finish them with vinegar I'm really thinking of this is almost like we made a braise of the bean and the beans have been braising in this liquid and to really season the liquid itself geremy Fox is the one who told me that if the the broth tastes good the beans will taste good and I think those are words to live by so just a couple gloves this is sherry vinegar you could use red wine you could use white wine but that's really going to make these even more delicious I wouldn't add it super early in the cook time because I don't want like cooked vinegar flavor pretty good and then the other thing I'm gonna do here at the last minute is to add more of the same herbs that that I used before the mint and the oregano really is going to infuse in fused into the cooking liquid like tea and I know it seems crazy but they need more salt so as you recall we also have I Olli and we have quite unevenly toasted bread crumbs as well so really get yourself excited about that this is the kind of thing that I would add like a head of torn kale or Swiss chard or escarole at the end and just let it wilt in there and then all of a sudden you have a bean beans and green soup hmm these things that you think might be beans are actually closer all right got my aioli hmm who wants to go on first I'm gonna bread crumb no I'm good so the idea with the I Olli is that as you eat the aioli is gonna infuse into the liquid in a very delicious way so you'll get that fresh garlic flavor and then the bread crumbs are just texture fantastic mmm now I'm kind of in how messed up in different textures they are who cares little pepper love pepper this I would happily for dinner mmm just love to look at it droplets there's crunchies there's creamy beans there's a Yoli it looks really good so perfect pot of beans once again from the top salt fat and time buy a good bean treat it very nicely I'm just gonna have a bite get it out of here this is the best stop it's too good it's really too good I recommend everybody just make a perfect pradhans I could not be happier right now I'm so pleased could everybody please leave so I could eat my beans no really leave mm-hmm delicious bean

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 1,422,003

Keywords: beans, carla music, carla lalli music, cook beans, bean recipe, cooking beans, beans recipe, pot of beans, gourmet beans, make gourmet beans, restaurant style beans, professional bean recipe, professional beans recipe, perfect beans, cook butterbeans, butterbeans, cook legume, cook legumes, home cooked beans, homecooked beans, perfect beans at home, make beans at home, cook beans at home, best beans recipe, carla bon app, food, bon appetit

Id: PXqoyt4vsPA

Length: 20min 5sec (1205 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 06 2020