What Happened?

Here's a mystery for you - what happened to my beans?

I loaded up the crock pot with all kinds of lovely ingredients such as pinto beans, chopped tomatoes (a good canned brand), onions, garlic, beef broth and jalapeño sauce, set the temperature to low and left it to bubble away all day.

I expected to have these beans as part of a dinner using the last of Chilebrown's tamales, which I had thawed that day.

These are the very same pinto beans I used successfully to make refritos about a week ago but this time they wouldn't cook. After simmering all day, the beans were nearly as hard and mealy as when I put them in. So, I improvised a substitute for dinner and left the beans to simmer all night long figuring they just needed more time.

Well, they got plenty of time - all night and all the next day and still they were mealy, not softly yielding as one would expect. I kept tasting and adding liquid, hoping to resurrect them, but no dice! I finally threw them out. I hate wasting food but they were truly inedible.

So, what happened to my beans? Maybe someone out there can give me a lesson in cooking beans in a crock pot?

Pork and Beans and Beans

Take Two on the Pot Pork.

I cooked up a pot of Full Belly beans à la Jamie Oliver from his book Jamie at Home (how's that for name dropping on the bean and recipe sources? I'm becoming such a food snob) and piled them into a bowl with some pork, some goozle and some green beans.

Man, it was good!

Jamie Oliver's Humble Home-Cooked Beans

11 ounces dried cranberry or cannellini beans, soaked in cold water for at least 12 hours
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
a few sprigs of fresh thyme (got them out of my garden)
a sprig of fresh rosemary (ditto)
3 bay leaves
1 stick celery, trimmed
1 small potato, peeled and halved
2 cherry tomatoes
extra virgin olive oil
red wine vinegar
a few sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
4 slices of sourdough bread (he serves his beans on toast)

Drain the soaked beans and rinse with lots of cold water. Put them in a deep pot with everything except the oil, vinegar, parsley and bread, and cover them with cold water. Put on heat and bring slowly to a boil; cover with a lid and simmer very gently for 45 minutes or until beans are soft. (Here, I added the goozle left in the bottom of crock pot when I made the Pot Pork recipe and then just enough water to cover the beans - good move!)

Drain beans in a colander, reserving enough of the cooking liquid to cover them halfway up when put back into the pot (I saved all the cooking liquid - kept the rest for some other future meal and filled the bean pot as Jamie recommends). Remove the garlic, tomatoes, celery, potato and herb stems from the beans; discard celery and herb stems. Squeeze out the garlic and tomatoes from their skins onto a plate with the potato and mash together with a fork, then stir them back into the beans. Season well with salt and pepper, pour in three good glugs of olive oil and a few splashes of vinegar.

Steam some fresh green beans. In a wide soup or pasta bowl, ladle in a nice helping of dried beans and liquid, top with Pot Pork and surround with fresh beans. Dig in. Oh, baby!