Part of the fun of cooking, for me anyway, is the memory of good people, good times, and good food. Blogging about those good memories marries my love for cooking with my love for the written word. If you are a kindred spirit, I hope you’ll spend a few more minutes with me. If you prefer “just the facts, ma’am,” please feel free to click now and skip directly to the recipe.
Thinking about the subject “Can’t have one without the other,” complete this statement: ______ and cornbread.
If we were playing a game with answers based on a survey of popular responses, no doubt “beans” would top the list. I love beans with cornbread like Mom used to make. Seeing a vintage 1980’s slow cooker on the counter brought to mind Mom’s cornbread and Grandma Mima’s brown beans. Grandma Mima made the best brown beans for our holiday gatherings, and she made them in her slow cooker.
Grandma didn’t always have a slow cooker, since the slow cooker is younger than her youngest grandchild. (Note: A quick web search on “slow cooker history” returns the age of the slow cooker, not the grandchild.) But Grandma was practical, and stove top space was precious on Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings. Grandma’s slow cooker beans were every bit as good as what she cooked on the stovetop.
I don’t know exactly how Grandma made her slow cooker beans. Like many great cooks of her era, she just knew how to cook family favorites. I’ve recreated my version of Grandma’s slow cooker beans from a combination of fond memory and my own experimentation.
I always wash the beans well first, in a colander under a faucet of warm water. How “well” the beans should be washed is, like many things in life, something I just figured out from experience. Most beans look clean coming out of the bag, but the good cooks I know surely can’t be wrong in their thinking that beans need to be washed, and washed well.
Next, I “look” the beans. A friend from years past had never heard of “looking the beans” until she moved to our rural community as a middle-aged woman. “Looking the beans” is the term my family used to describe examining beans for dirt, rocks, or “bad” beans. Sometimes I’ll see something obvious, like a bean with a dark decayed-looking spot, and I definitely toss those. Right or wrong, my rule of thumb is similar to the “five-second rule.” If a bean floats to the top immediately after I cover the beans with water, that bean gets tossed. I’ve never had enough of those to worry about whether I’m wasting beans.
Some folks soak their beans overnight without boiling them, then cook the next day. I suspect my practical Grandma probably soaked her beans for several hours in the crockpot and then cooked them. I can only suspect because I never thought to ask her. The one thing I can say confidently is that beans are pretty forgiving in a slow cooker.
Grandma’s youngest grandchild rarely thinks about beans until the day she wants to eat them, necessitating what I call the “first boil” option. The pictured pot for the first boil is from the set that included my Mom’s favorite bean pot. The water is a little hard to see in the picture, but look closely and you’ll notice the water comes just below the top set of bolts. I didn’t measure the water, and I highly doubt that Grandma did either. I estimate 2 to 3 inches.
Bring the beans to a rolling boil for 10 minutes, then turn off the burner and let them sit in the pot for an hour. This is what they looked like shortly after I turned off the burner (I must confess… I forgot to take the picture when the timer went off.)
Put the beans into the slow cooker (including the water from the first boil if you used that method. Some instructions say the beans should be covered about 2 inches in water. I don’t like to take a chance on not having enough water, so I’m likely to use more. The worst thing that can happen is that I have more bean soup, which isn’t a bad thing. Cook on high for about 5 hours. (Generally, the longer you cook beans the better. Just make sure if you are going to be away from home for several hours to have plenty of water in the pot before you go, or turn down to low and expect a longer cooking time.)
Some people add all kinds of things to their beans. I don’t add anything except plain salt and maybe some fried meat or bacon grease. I’ve been told one shouldn’t salt beans until they have cooked a while. I can’t stand a bowl of beans that isn’t salty enough. In my opinion, trying to salt beans at the table is like trying to sweeten cold iced tea with sugar… neither tastes as good as you want. So I err on the side of salting the beans early in the process. When salting “to taste” I must consider that my husband once threatened to visit the local feed store and buy a salt block for the table. I do like my salt. (For those concerned about our health, rest assured I do consider health now that I’ve reached my “vintage” years.) =o)
I don’t always cook beans in the slow cooker. When I am home and have time to pay attention to what’s going on in the kitchen, I cook them on the stovetop. The process is similar, except that I don’t go through the preparatory step of either presoaking or first boil. I just cover them with water, bring them to a boil, and let them cook until done (checking frequently to be sure they have plenty of water).
