Growing up in Northern New Mexico one of the most nostalgic smells is a pot of beans and chile cooking on the stove.
I grew up as an extremely picky eater so this with bread was one of my most consumed foods, and most of the time it was ate at paternal grandmother Mary's, while my uncles watched football or after church. Grandma Mary lived in a mobile home with her brother and her sisters lived next door. Every night the whole family was around. Mary and her siblings were poor, though I never realized it. They never had a drivers license, walked to work, ate the same thing almost every night and worked at the same restaurant for 40+ years.
I wish I could say we ate beans they grew, in a clay pot they made, but it couldn't be any further from the truth. Despite this truth, it is traditional for a reason. Most 'norteno' families still make this dish. A quiet ode to the 'los viejos'.
Now that I've moved back from a few years of travels working in restaurants, I appreciate those I come from and what built traditions. We serve at dinners, and eat at home, beans and chile like I was raised on at my grandmothers, but now from beans we grow, clay we dig and a pot we make. It's an honor to be from families that have been from this terrain for generations and to be able to have a chance to build off that.
Here's the recipe for my favorite dish / side dish of all time.
↓ RECIPE SERVES 4-6
10 minutes prep time
8+ hours cook time
↓ INGREDIENTS
120g dried beans ( tuah-tah, pinto, anazazi, bolita )
30g chicos
2 small garlic cloves
salt ( celtic or any unprocessed salt with trace minerals)
120g fat - tallow, lard, olive oil or sunflower oil ( highest quality to avoid an oxidized oil)
1,400g cold water
20 - 40g red chile powder ( depending on desired spice level )
↓ METHOD
Sort through the dry beans for little debris or rocks then add to your micaceous bean pot or pot of choice. Add chicos to the same pot.
Fill the pot with water and soak over night. Cook the next day in the same water.
Place pot on the stove and bring to a light boil.
Once at a simmer add a pinch of salt, and turn down to a slow gentle simmer.
Once at a slow simmer add fat, chile, and both cloves of garlic lightly smashed and shelled.
Season with little amounts of salt through the entire process, doing so will give you depth of flavor you cannot get otherwise. Add every 30 minutes or so, taste and add accordingly.
Cook for roughly 8-10 hours, or until the beans are soft through. ( it will vary with each bean variety. salt is important for human health, as for all things we consume, celtic salt is an unprocessed salt that still contains trace minerals unlike most that are pure sodium chloride.)
These beans can cook all day, but are ready once tender all the way through. Beans are great brothy with bread, or less brothy as a side.
* I have found that beans that are rapidly cooked, in a pressure cooker, or from a can, negatively affect my stomach and never taste nearly as good. I recommend trying a nice quality heirloom bean, soaked over night, cooked for a long period. I believe slow cooking beans this way also makes them more nutritious and less toxic due to the lectins.