Red Beans and Rice - Creole-Style Spicy Red Beans & Rice Recipe

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with red beans and rice that's right it's almost Mardi Gras and besides drinking daiquiris out of glasses the size of your leg or exposing yourself for some plastic beads what better way to celebrate them by making this amazing classic Creole comfort food and by the way there's like ten thousand different ways you can make this recipe and this just happens to be mine and this video is going to start like so many often do by showing you the meat and for this I'm going to use two kinds I'm gonna use a smoked ham hock Trishna Lee this dish is made with the leftover bone from a ham which was generally on Sunday and then Monday they would use the bone to make this but since we don't have access to that we'll go with a ham hock instead which is going to provide pretty much the exact same flavor and then besides our hack we're also going to use a couple andouille sausage which is a sort of spicy pork sausage and that's also lightly smoked so that's going to work really good here and what we're going to want to do is cube that up so we'll cut those links in half then we'll split those pieces lengthwise and cut those in half and then we'll turn it and cut it in two I don't know about half inch pieces and you know our system nobody cares how big you cube your sausage but pick a size and stick with it so we'll cut that up and then we going to go ahead and we're going to toss that into our soup pot with a little bit of vegetable oil on a medium heat and what we'll do is we'll cook that for a few minutes so that it releases some of that amazing flavorful and dewy sausage oil and that's what we'll use to cook our Holy Trinity and don't worry it's not a sacrilegious as it sounds so we'll cook that sausage stirring on medium heat all right we really don't need to brown it those edges will start to get a little color and more importantly that fats going to start to render out a little bit so that's looking good right there and at that point like I said we're going to introduce our Holy Trinity which is this it's a trio of aromatic vegetables including onion green pepper you can use green bell I'm going to use poblano which I think have a little more interesting flavor and celery and then there in the background you can see a little bit of garlic which we'll add later but for now it's all about the Trinity so we'll go ahead and we'll add that to our pot and what we want to do is cook these vegetables stirring until they soften up and those onions turn translucent and that's going to take anywhere between five and ten minutes it really depends on how small you diced them up which reminds me as you saw we diced these pretty small ideally and red beans and rice you want your veggies to kind of disappear kind of just dissolve into the mixture but anyway like I said we're going to cook that stirring on medium until those vegetables soften up and sweeten up and end up looking something like this and once that's happened let's go ahead and add in our garlic and as usual we do not want to brown the garlic we just want to sizzle it in that mixture for about a minute at which point we will add the final flavorings which are going to be very simple by the way this is definitely not one of those recipes you want to screw up with a lot of exotic ingredients unless of course you consider bay leaf exotic which in that case you really need to get out more so I'm going to toss in two big or three small bay leaves we're also going to add some dry thyme sure you can use fresh of course but I do prefer the flavor edge right here we're also going to add a whole bunch of finely and freshly ground black pepper and way more than a pinch of cayenne I'm going to put about a 1/2 teaspoon myself but that's up to you don't make it too hot and Blamey and then it's time for the star of the show the red beans so we're gonna put in 1 pound of red kidney beans those have been soaked overnight oh you gotta soak your beans overnight but what if you forgot well I got a shortcut for you on the blog post so check that out of course we need to add our smoked ham hock to the pot and then last but not least we need a couple quarts of liquid I'm going to use cold freshwater but if you have some stock or broth around you want to use up that would be beautiful a little extra flavor never hurt anybody and we'll give that a stir and we will raise our heat too high because we need to bring this up to a simmer which is going to take a little while and while that's coming up to temperature you may see some bean foam rise to the top which is generally not a bad idea to skim off in case you're curious I believe the official culinary term for that would be 2 D flatulate the top so go ahead and feel free to skim as you see fit and once that does come to a simmer all we need to do is back the down to low to maintain a gentle bit steady simmer alright so play with your heat until you have your mixture simmering something similar to this and then the rest of this recipe is as easy as it is boring because all we're going to do is cook this on low stirring occasionally for about three or four hours or until your beans are very very soft and your meat is tender there's really only one thing we need to do in the middle of this process and that's add a little bit of salt alright I generally don't like to salt my beans at the beginning of the cooking process so what like to do roughly halfway through the cooking time maybe like the hour-and-a-half mark is that a nice big spoon of salt at that point and then we'll just adjust later okay so if you want to add your salt at the beginning go ahead it probably doesn't make that big of a difference so we'll stir that in and we will continue to let the simmer gently on low until like I said our beans are absolutely and completely tender and soft all right my ham hock is kind of breaking apart that's another great sign this is pretty much ready to eat and at this point you have a huge decision and what texture do you want to serve your red beans many chefs will stop right here and serve it just like this where we have a lot of liquid and a lot of whole beans but another method which I prefer is to continue cooking and stirring this and while you are you're kind of smashing some of the beans against the side of the pot with a spoon or you can even use a potato masher and kind of smoosh them against the bottom and what that's going to do is kind of turn that thinner soupier mixture into something very very thick and creamy so I continue cooking mine smashing those beans until I'd say roughly half the beans were smashed and half we're still left whole and as you can see that really really thickened up alright so both methods extremely delicious it really just depends on the viscosity you're going for and then besides deciding how thick to make this the only other thing you have to do is taste and adjust for seasoning so please promise you're going to taste this result you may very well have to add a little more and then once it's tasting and feeling exactly how you want it we're gonna lay that up into some warm bowls and of course you have to serve this with some steamed rice otherwise you got to change the name of the whole dish so I packed some steamed rice and a buttered ramekin and I place that on top and I should mention that traditionally the rice is put in the bowl first but I decided to go food blogger on this and fancy it up a little bit and then we'll finish this with a generous scattering of chopped green onions and last but not least it's not red beans rice unless there's a little hot sauce involved so we'll go ahead and dot the top with the hot sauce of our choosing which is not only going to taste great but it does add a little visual distraction from the less than photogenic surface I'll be the first to admit red beans of rice is not the most attractive thing but unlike the weather person on your local newscast it doesn't have to be it's a little bit of hot sauce and that red beans and rice or at least our version of it is done I mean if there was a Mount Rushmore of American comfort food this has got to be up there I mean it's got to be right next to mac and cheese by the way that's a great question what is on your Mount Rushmore of American comfort foods but anyway while you mull that over let me grab a spoon and go in for the official taste and right here you can get a perfect look at my desired texture like I said I probably mashed in about half those beans which I think sticks to the rice a little better but anyways we referenced earlier just the epitome of comfort food just a beautiful combination of those rich smoky meats those stick to your ribs beans aromatic vegetables this is just a big old bowl of feeling good and who doesn't like to feel good alright so I really do hope you give this a try head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,501,245

Rating: 4.9190626 out of 5

Keywords: Red Beans And Rice (Food), Louisiana Creole Cuisine (Cuisine), Rice And Beans (Food), Food (TV Genre), Cooking, stew, chef, john, foodwishes, mardi gras, new orleans, cajun, Louisiana (US State), soul food, entree, dinner, Bean (Food), Recipe

Id: T06oh88VhiE

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 16 2015