Tell me how you like your beans, and I’ll tell you where you’re from. Frijoles negros? Let’s discuss it over daiquiris at El Floridita. Pintos? The first course will probably be pozole. In Puerto Rico, black beans are only for soup, and white beans are pretty popular, but will always be a step down from gandules guisados, also known as pigeon peas or pois Congo, and on the C-list compared with the real deal, habichuelas coloradas or rosadas, reds or pinks.
I’ve gone through most of the methods, dried or canned, with a sofrito (the Creole saute of onions, garlic, tomatoes and sweet peppers) or without, and I’m happy to share all of them with you, but there’s one mainstay that has to, has to be in the stew: pork. The vegan trip won’t impart that flavor and feel, or hold everything together. (Louis Armstrong fans already know, as we know.)
So: Take a long, fatty strip of bacon or even a cut slice of pancetta and pop it into a pot of soaked beans set to boil. Leave it in there for three hours. Then go ahead and brown some diced bacon or salt pork in a pan and start your sofrito with the drippings. Chop up some peppers (pasilla, Anaheim, yellow jalapeños, whatever you have), throw in a couple of spoonfuls of tomato paste. Also check out those little cans of El Pato tomato sauce they have at Latin markets.
Soften the beans for hours, then stir in the sofrito and add salt. If they don't come out perfect, remember that they’ll be better the next day and then the day after that.
The starch basically becomes an afterthought. I'll take red beans and rice any day instead of rice and beans, and no, I don't need them wrapped up in a tortilla.
