How to Make Red Beans and Rice

[Music] Mondays in Louisiana means red beans and rice for dinner and this tradition goes all the way back to the days when ladies needed to make a hands-off dinner while doing a little bit of laundry well I would do laundry every single day for a big bowl of red beans and rice but it's pretty hard to duplicate outside of Pelican state luckily Aaron is here to show us the voodoo of red beans and rice red beans and rice is one dish you really need to get right it's a heart and soul of New Orleans cooking and what we wanted was a very hearty very smoky and very meaty and our beans needed to be creamy excellent and also we wanted to make this available to everybody because some of the ingredients that are in traditional recipes are hard to find that's right so we're gonna start with the beans okay okay so Camellia beans are the traditional bean down in New Orleans so we thought that we could just buy kidney beans up here we find that their skins are too chewy and that their flesh is too melee so we went and tried a couple of other things our favorite bean was the small red bean this is also called the Mexican bean and this is creamy and that skins were very tender so we're gonna use these and we're actually gonna brine or beans project brining beans softens the skins so that the bean says they cook well they don't crack open exactly and it seasons them all the way throughout so I'm gonna add 3 tablespoons of salt to four quarts of water it's gonna whisk this to combine have those beans right in there and we're gonna let these brine at least eight hours and up to 24 hours okay so you can do this a day know exactly okay Bridge a it's time for the meat my favorite part legitimate Louisiana recipes for red beans and rice the signature flavors come from three different pork products so we have an Dewey sausage right here which is pretty easy to find then we have pickled pork shoulder I've never seen in my grocery pickle pork is really important cause it adds brightness to our red beans and rice and then third we have toss Oh toss Oh is heavily spiced ham that is smoked until it's almost like jerky it's hard to find also but we're gonna find substitute for it yeah I haven't seen this at my grocery store either no me neither okay so come over here so we have four slices of bacon bacon is gonna be part of our solution for the Tasso bacon is gonna give us a pork flavor and also the smokiness that we're missing so this has been rendering for about - 8 minutes until it's nice and brown - the bacon we're gonna add one onion it's been finely chopped 1 small green pepper that's been seeded and finely chopped and 1 celery rib that's been finely chopped and this is also known as the Holy Trinity Holy Trinity is a foundation than most Cajun recipes well the fridge they have their mirepoix Latin cooking has its sofrito and Cajun and Creole cooking well they have the Holy Trinity they're all doing the same thing which is establishing a flavor base the components of all three are humble and inexpensive vegetables but they're considered indispensable in their respective traditions these all-important veg sort of disappear in the finished dish we like to think of them as the unsung heroes of the ingredient world their flavors permeate the food and without them well the dish would simply taste flat and one-dimensional so our vegetables have softened these have cooked for about 6 or 7 minutes and now we're ready for our spices great so because we're not using the toss so we need to make up for the spices that we're lacking so we're gonna add 1 teaspoon of paprika 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne and we're adding 3 garlic cloves that we've minced 1 teaspoon of thyme leaves and also 2 bay leaves so we're gonna cook this until it's fragrant about 30 seconds Oh smell it absolutely so I've drained and rinsed our brine beans and I'm gonna add them to the pot and I'm gonna add 3 cups of chicken broth and 6 cups of water a lot of the old recipes for red beans and rice call for all water and then a lot of the more modern versions call for all chicken broth and so we tried both and we found that this was a perfect ratio that's great and there's just enough chicken broth in here but not so much that it's going to overtake that pork exactly yes we want that pork flavor to come through so we're gonna bring this up to a boil and once it comes to a boil we're gonna cut it back but we're not gonna cut it back to like a very low simmer like usually you'll cook beans we want this to be at a vigorous simmer and we want that because we want the beans to kind of knock against each other and really throw off their starches because we want this to be creamy dish at the bean be creamy and you're gonna be surprised that the beans are gonna hold their shape okay so this has been simmering vigorously for about 45 minutes and the beans are just tender but they're not exploded and they're not exploded yet you were right yep but now we're gonna move on to our other two key ingredients and do a sausage which is a must so we're gonna add 8 ounces I mean newbie sausage that we cut into bite-sized pieces okay not only are we gonna heat the andouille sausage through we want to impart the smoky spicy flavor into our beans okay and then the next key ingredient is pickled pork shoulder which as we mentioned is very very very hard to find we did try making her own pickled pork shoulder and it was a three day process and that's something that nobody's gonna want to do a shot in the dark we tried adding just a teaspoon of vinegar it added the brightness it 'ti that that pork added to it right so this is magic magic in a small bowl one teaspoon of red wine vinegar and we're just gonna continue to cook this for about 30 minutes until the beans are fully cooked and creamy and has thrown off all that nice starch to make that very creamy liquid so now we're gonna move on to the rice here we have two cups of long grain white rice can you please put that my colander and just rinse it until the water runs clear what we're doing is renting off that excess starch and this gonna really help us to produce a very fluffy white rice at the end sounds good meanwhile I'm gonna melt a tablespoon of butter rice is rinsed and ready captain good job all right our butter is just about melted okay so now we're gonna start to hear rice what we're gonna do is we're just gonna coat the rice in the fat and we're gonna cook it until the rice starts to become aromatic and also the translucent this is a really important step in making any rice dishes okay so our rice is ready we're gonna add three cups of water and a teaspoon of table salt so that's a one to one-and-a-half ratio of rice to liquid now that's different from the back of the box package which often has a 1 to 2 so in those directions they would have 2 cups of rice and 4 cups of our what that does is it actually creates very gummy rice oddly enough using less water means it's less water to be absorbed by that rice and you get fluffier more tender grains exactly which is what we want so we're gonna bring this up to a boil over high heat and once it comes to a boil I'm gonna reduce it down to low and I'm gonna put the lid on it and let it simmer for about 18 minutes just until all that water is absorbed once the water is absorbed I'm gonna take it off the heat I'm gonna take the lid off I'm gonna wrap it up with a towel and I'm gonna let it sit on the back burner for about 15 minutes to just steam all right so our beans are a perfect Brigitte we're close to done we're close to that yes yep see how they've reduced a bit and that liquid is nice and creamy yeah and the beans are still intact not soupy not soupy we're gonna remove the dailies that we added so now I'm just gonna add a splash of red wine vinegar we added a teaspoon earlier but at the end I'm just gonna add a couple more drops just to make it pop I'm just gonna taste it to see if it needs any salt I know it doesn't need pepper because we had the other water oh yeah please perfect great you're gonna love it excellent you'll love it that is very puffy rice it's because we rinsed that starch off and it's nice because there's still enough of that brothy sauce in there and it's creamy sauce oh yeah here are some scallions and some hot sauce help yourself thank you even before I tuck into this what I'm amazed by and I was really really skeptical about look at the beans and they are all intact and that was despite that vigorous simmering let's press your brain it is so tender Ridgid they're really tender I guess would be good for me to eat or I could just describe it to you from mm-hmm melt-in-your-mouth tender in fact I can't believe that they look like this in the bowl because when you go to eat them I know they just fall apart in your mouth that's perfect a lot of smoke in there between the skin and the andouille mmmm and poor little rice underneath not getting any love from that rice is fluffy tender and ready to soak up oh yeah a beautiful creamy sauce it's doing its job mm-hmm make Monday's red beans and rice day in your home the key is using the right substitutions for hard-to-find ingredients cook smoky bacon in place of Tasso ham then saute the Trinity for authentic Louisiana flavor at garlic paprika and lots of pepper along with brine small red beans and those are a fine sub for camellia brand beans at plenty of andouille sausage and a little red wine vinegar to take the place of briny pickled pork shoulder and there you have it from our Test Kitchen to your kitchen the most satisfying red beans and rice thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 381,258

Rating: 4.8998852 out of 5

Keywords: red beans and rice, red beans and rice recipe, new orleans recipes, new orleans, new orleans red beans and rice, how to make red beans and rice, red beans, rice

Id: CZmklbHvo5Y

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2019