So to finish up the cooking and further reduce the sauce, I cooked the beans for their final hour without a lid, after which time they looked like this-intact, soft, and creamy, suspended in a medium-thick, concentrated barbecue sauce. When added to the still very liquid-heavy beans, it formed a really, really thin barbecue sauce, but there was still hours of cooking ahead, ample time for the sauce to reduce and thicken.Īfter three hours in a 300☏ oven, the beans emerged almost completely soft and creamy throughout and with a much thickened sauce, albeit not quite standard barbecue sauce consistancy yet. The final set of ingredients were mainly what I would use to create a simple, standard barbecue sauce-ketchup, vinegar, and mustard, along with brown sugar, honey, molasses, barbecue rub, and hot sauce. The reason for this step is that acids can inhibit a bean's ability to cook, so I wanted to let the beans begin to cook before the introduction of items that could alter the process. I then let the beans simmer for one hour prior to adding the rest of the ingredients. Next I strained the beans and added them in along with chicken stock and water for the liquid. I cooked these until softened, a process I also use to start off my own barbecue sauce recipes. Of which I used onions, jalapeños, green bell pepper, and garlic. So I kept the bacon, but cut it back to half a pound, which, by the time it was rendered and crisp, there was more than enough fat to sauté the veggies in. It's hard not to love Alton Brown's recipe that begins with an entire pound of bacon, and while there's fun in saying there's that much salty, fatty pork in my beans, I think it's a bit overkill. Common practice usually forbids salt at this step, but the truth is that soaking in salt water actually results in creamier beans and helps keep the skins from breaking apart during the long cook on top of adding additional seasoning. I used an equal amount of three bean varieties-great northern, pinto, and small red beans-to get a pound total, which I then soaked in salted water overnight. So I began my journey here with dried beans, opting for a variety because I really loved how different beans added additional flavor and texture in Mike Mills' recipe. There's no doubt the from scratch beans have a depth of flavor and more tender bean than the recipe that starts with a series of cans. Having made both bean recipes for years now, it was easy for me to pick out the best aspects of each and add my own stamp on it to get me closer to my desired end result. So how to solve that? Make my own recipe! Both have their own unique qualities, and while either recipe stands up against almost every side of beans I've gotten in a barbecue joint, neither really represents my most ideal barbecue bean. The recipes are radically different, one begins with dried beans and requires almost a day from start to finish, while the other utilizes canned beans and can be completed in just over an hour. Since then, I've relied on two recipes to serve me well throughout the years- Alton Brown's Once and Future Bean and Mike Mills' Tangy Pit Beans. Barbecue beans have been a staple at The Meatwave pretty much since its inception.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |