Chili
Day 1
3 Cups dried beans (mix and match, I did 1C kidney, 1C garbanzo, 1/4C Soy, 1/4C Northern, 1/4C Adzuki, 1/4C black-eyed peas). Rise well.
Cover with warm water.
Stir in 3 Tablespoons buttermilk.
Let sit ~16 hours.
Day2
Rinse beans well. Drain. Put beans in a pot and cover with fresh water. Bring to a boil, skim off foam. Reduce heat to a simmer and simmer for about 2.5 hours. This is the critical part, because the beans need to pre-cook before they are put into the crock.
Into Crock pot add:
1 Cup veggie or chicken broth
2 medium onions, chopped and sauted in olive oil (with a dash of salt and pepper too)
6 garlic cloves (at LEAST), chopped and sauted
One large can of tomato chunks (organic)
At least 1 Cup frozen corn (Land's Sake Farm)
1/2 Cup frozen bell pepper chunks (Land's Sake Farm)
3 large red hot peppers from Chris's Farm (http://reimannfamilyfarm.com/)
2 Tablespoons Chili powder
1 Tablespoon Oregano
1 Tablespoon Cumin
1/2 Tablespoon salt
Finally add the hot beans on top of these veggies, with as much of the bean liquid as you want or as can fit into the crock (the starchy liquid will make for a slightly creamier chili).
Turn the crock pot to high for 3 hours and down to low for 2 hours - try not to open the lid until it is done!
Increase the flavor "heat" as you prefer (with other chilies or hot sauce). Chris I might send you a photo of the red peppers to clarify what kind they are!
100% Cornmeal Cornbread
Preheat oven to 450 F
Pour 2 Tablespoons Canola oil into a 12 inch cast iron skillet. (Note, if your cast iron is well seasoned, 1 Tbs should be plenty).
Place skillet into hot oven until read to use.
In a bowl combine:
2 Cups Corn Meal
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1 tsp. salt
Make sure all of the soda clumps are broken up.
Then, beat in 2 eggs and 2 Cups Buttermilk.
Pour batter into the hot skillet. Bake for 20 minutes until the edges are crisp and the top is golden brown. Today we also stirred 1/2 Cup shredded cheese into the batter before baking - an excellent addition!!
Can I use Kefir instead of buttermilk to soak the beans? Does that mean you use the soaking liquid too? (I was told to throw it out because it is full of farts!)
ReplyDeleteAnna replied:
ReplyDeleteDefinitely throw out the bean soaking farty liquid (the liquid that the beans soaked in overnight)! But feel free to use as little or as much of the fresh water that the beans were boiled in for 2.5 hours on day 2, just as long as you were careful to skim off the foam that rises to the top of the cooking water. Coming from someone who doesn't digest beans well and who lives with someone who has even a stronger reaction to undercooked beans (ha), soaking in buttermilk made the beans SO much more digestible (read: NO FARTS) regardless of how much boiling water I added to the crock pot.
SO WHY SOAK?
Soaking starts fermenting the beans, which neutralizes phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors, and also breaks down hard-to-digest complex sugars. Traditional cooking without soaking does not do any of this (think canned beans, Chipotle, etc)! The main reason we FART from beans is because our bodies cannot breakdown large chains of complex carbohydrates found in beans. These complex carbohydrates pass into our gut and our own microflora start to ferment the sugars, resulting in excess gas and bloating! So if we instead add the MICROBES to the beans before we eat them (in the form of whey and buttermilk), then we only consume simple sugars that our bodies easily digest. Cool huh? Last cool fact: BeanO is actually an enzyme purified from a fungus that can break down complex carbohydrates into simple sugars. So BeanO breaks down the carbos in your gut before your microflora are able to ferment it, resulting in less gas.
As for Kefir, I would instead use the whey from kefir that has settled. I just realized the original recipe I followed for soaking the beans asks for whey or lemon juice, but I think the buttermilk was perfect. Plus we use buttermilk for everything these days, so we always have it around.
One last thing, beans are not just hard to digest, complex carbohydrates. They are FULL of of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. All of these nutrients are more digestible after fermenting the beans overnight.