West Virginia · Main
Pinto Beans and Cornbread
- Intermediate
- 3 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 500g dried pinto beans, soaked overnight
- 150g salt pork or a ham hock
- 1 onion, halved
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp black pepper
- Salt to taste
- For the cornbread: 250g cornmeal, 60g flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 1 egg, 400ml buttermilk, 3 tbsp bacon fat
- Chopped raw onion and chow chow to serve
Equipment
Skillet
The skills inside
Soaking dried goods back to life
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
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
- Drain the beans, cover with fresh water by 5cm, and add the salt pork, onion, bay, and pepper.
- Simmer 2-3 hours, uncovered, adding water as needed, until the beans are creamy and the liquid has turned into a thick pot liquor. 180 min
- Salt only at the end: salting early keeps the skins tough.
- For the cornbread, heat the bacon fat in a cast-iron skillet at 220C until smoking. Mix the batter quickly, pour it into the hot fat, and bake 20-25 min. 25 min
- Serve the beans in bowls with cornbread, raw onion, and chow chow alongside.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique 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.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chenin Blanc (Vouvray sec)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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