Cookerati

This is one of my favorite recipes and it generally goes over pretty well, especially when the weather is not so great. Since it’s one of those foods that cooks all day, it permeates the house and makes you hungry for it all day — not IT — the food, you knucklehead. This is the food that forever converted my good friend, Renee, to eating spicy food. She loves it and that’s a great endorsement. I’m canning the bulk of this for her and for me sometime later!

If you want to serve this as a vegetarian meal, just don’t put in the sausage and remove a cup of the broth.

Ingredients:

1 pound dry red beans

12 cups vegetable broth [can substitute chicken, if you’re not a vegan]

1 pound chorizo or hot Italian sausage [optional if you’re a vegan; you must reduce the broth by one cup]

1 Vidalia onion – chopped

1 green pepper – chopped

1 red pepper – chopped

1 yellow pepper – chopped

4 celery stalks – chopped

1 garlic clove – minced

1.5 TBLS ground chipotle

4 or 5 stalks of cilantro

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Rinse and sort beans making sure no stones exist. Place beans in a large pot with 4 cups of the vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then cover. Soak overnight.
2. Remove casings from the sausage and brown in a frying pan. Make sure the pan is hot before you put the sausage in the pan. This will prevent sticking.
3. Put the rest of the ingredients in the pan and bring to a boil.
4. Lower heat and simmer for 4 hours.
5. Blend the mixture a little bit using an immersion blender. Do not overdo it. This is done to thicken the broth. About half the beans should remain intact.

I serve the mixture over brown rice and with the cucumber/rice wine/olive oil salad.

Image via Google Images