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Cuban Black Beans and Rice
- Intermediate
- 2 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, an earthy, grounding base, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 400g dried black beans, soaked overnight
- 1 onion, halved, plus 1 diced
- 1 green pepper, halved, plus 1 diced
- 6 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tbsp cumin
- 1 tbsp oregano
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 300g white rice
- Salt and black pepper
The skills inside
Frying the paste until the oil splitsSoaking dried goods back to lifeMashing & puréeing
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the drained beans with the halved onion, halved pepper, and bay in fresh water 90 min until tender. Discard the halved vegetables. 90 min
- Make a sofrito: cook the diced onion, diced pepper, and garlic in the olive oil until soft, then add the cumin and oregano and cook 1 min. 1 min
- Stir the sofrito into the beans, add the vinegar, and simmer 30 min uncovered until thick, mashing some beans against the pot for body. 30 min
- Cook the rice separately until fluffy.
- Season the beans well and serve over or alongside the rice.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes
- Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
- Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
- Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
- The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
- Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.
Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.
Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes
- It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
- The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
- The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
- The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
- Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.
Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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