Recipe
Matt's Black Beans
Time: About 2½ hours, but much of it is inactive
Yield: 6 servings (easily scales)
| Beans 1 pound black beans (450g) 1 green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and quartered (150g) 1 medium onion, minced (110g) 6 garlic cloves, minced (30g) 2 bay leaves 1½ teaspoons salt (8g) Sofrito |
2 tablespoons olive oil (100g) 1 medium onion, minced (110g) 1 green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and minced (150g) 8 garlic cloves, minced (40g) 2 teaspoons dried oregano (2g) ¾ teaspoon salt (4g) 1½ teaspoon ground cumin (4g) 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice (14g) |
For the beans:
Bring all bean ingredients to a boil in 11 cups (2500g) of water over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer until beans are tender but not splitting (about 2 hours; add more water if necessary). Remove and discard bay leaves.
For the sofrito:
Near the end of the beans’ cooking time, heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add ingredients through salt, sautéing until vegetables soften (about 8-10 minutes). Add cumin and sauté until fragrant (about 1 minute more).
To finish dish:
Once the beans are ready, scoop 1 cup beans and 2 cups of cooking liquid into the pan with sofrito. Using a potato masher, fork, or immersion blender, mash until smooth.
Simmer over medium heat until liquid is reduced and thickened (about 6 minutes).
Return mixture to bean pot; simmer until beans are creamy and liquid thickens to sauce consistency (15-20 minutes).
Add lime juice and simmer 1 minute longer. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Notes
This dish is a no-brainer for scaling; making more doesn't take any more time and it freezes magnificently (defrost in the fridge, not with a microwave, though, unless you enjoy eating black paste). If you are scaling the recipe, you actually don't need to scale the sofrito on a 1:1 basis. Use what you have available, but don't fret if you run out of green peppers.
The dish also gets thicker as it ages, so I like to use it with rice as a solo dish on day 1 and in burritos (or similar) the next.
The amount of water is a bit of a judgment call, based on how boisterously you decide to simmer the pot. I like my result to be a little thicker, so I often cut a cup of water out. You may also decide to let the final mixture simmer for longer, in order to thicken it.
Do not use canned black beans. They don’t bring the right mouth-feel to this dish, and canned beans generally have no flavor. If you have no other option than canned beans, you’ll need to reduce the initial stage--or they will disintegrate into a nasty mess.
Do not eliminate the salt. This dish needs it.
When mashing the beans with the sofrito and reducing, using an immersion blender makes this so much easier. I often opt to blend in the main pot, skipping the step of blending and reducing in a separate pot. However, do not overblend. You want to have a good balance of whole beans to blended. Do a little, then stop and test.
Do not skip the lime juice. The addition of this acid at the end of the clarifies the different flavors in a way that is tough to describe. Be very careful not to put too much lime juice in, though. A little is awesome and clarifies things; too much ruins it.
Adapted from The Best Recipe, 1999.