recipes on ben's notes

Low Effort Chili

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Work in progress. Made it for the first time this weekend, based on ideas I’ve been tossing around.

Ingredients

1 bag (20oz) Hurst’s HamBeens (15-bean soup mix) (see Notes)
1 lb & change ground pork (or ground beef, make it 70/30 or 80/20)
1½ white onions, diced
3 medium carrots, diced
1 bell pepper, diced (color of your choice)
6 cloves garlic, peeled
6-8 dry chile peppers of various varieties (see Notes)
2+ tsp cumin
1+ tsp chili powder
salt (salt it like you want)
2 tsp or more beef Better than Bouillon
1 can tomato paste

Equipment

Food processor
Water kettle
Dutch oven/cocotte

Preparation

About half an hour before you start cooking, dump the bag of HamBeens in a large heatproof bowl, sort them to make sure there’s no rocks. Pour at least a liter of boiling water over them, probably adding another half liter shortly thereafter, and let them rehydrate. Start your oven for 250°F, ideally on convection.
While the beans are soaking, rinse, then tear the stem end off the dry chiles and dump the seeds. They won’t blend well in the next step, so it’s best to just get them out of the way. Put the stemmed & seeded chiles in another heatproof bowl, and pour additional boiling water to cover. Let sit for roughly 20 minutes to rehydrate.
Chop all the vegetables but the garlic. Put the garlic cloves in the food processor’s bowl; drain the rehydrated chiles, add them to the food processor’s bowl; add BTB & ~½cup water, cover, and process until smooth. Set aside for now.
Heat dutch oven over a medium-high heat; once hot, place the ground meat, distributing in an even layer. Salt, and let sit until browning is setting in. Break up the meat, redistributing to get the bulk at least browned, or lightly cooked, then set aside in a bowl.
Add the onions to the hot rendered fat from the meat, stirring to coat; add some salt, stir, and cover. Let sit to let the initial steam pressure help the onions through to translucent, then uncover. After some of the liquid has steamed off, add the carrots & bell peppers.
Cook the vegetables until suitably sautéed; once ready, add the beans, and add boiling water from a kettle to just cover the beans & vegetables, plus a margin. Not looking for huge headroom (the soak has helped, and we’ll add more liquid later) but rather for just enough to make the initial boil work.
Bring to a slow boil with the lid mostly on, and keep the pot at boiling for 20 minutes to complete the initial cooking stage.
Turn off the heat on the dutch oven and re-add the ground pork, as well as now adding the blended chiles, cumin, & chili powder at this point. Stir gently to incorporate.
Cover the pan, and place it on the middle shelf of your oven, still at 250°F.
Bake at that temperature for the next four to five hours, checking occasionally. Add liquid as needed, and in the last hour or so, stir in the can of tomato paste.

On the bean mix, any many-many bean mix will do; there’s 13-bean mixes and 15-bean mixes, you want to make sure there’s a fair proportion of peas and lentils that will break down further as part of the cooking. The HamBeens mix is just very reliable and of good quality, for a decent price.

On the chiles, pick the varieties you like. I recommend at least two, just because every chile I’ve had has been strong in one note and weak in another. I like Guajillo & New Mexico together; you can even throw in more than I used here. This dish can soak up a lot of chiles.

Weekend (weeknight?) braised beef

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Okay so a braiser is admittedly not the most common kitchen pan. This is unfortunate; braises are a busy person’s best friend, really, and a dish that makes setting up a braise easy is good to have—and hardly a unitasker. My aunt bought me a Staub braiser years & years ago, and I adore it, but I understand that’s a lot to spend on a pan. While I will strongly advocate for trying to thrift for something, there are other options on the market. Serious Eats has a review of available braisers, and I know America’s Test Kitchen has also investigated this a few times.

The goal with this dish is maintaining a close, steamy cooking environment; the heavy lid and plenty of liquids, plus the very low temperature, makes for an environment that’s perfect for taking tough, sinewy & muscular cuts of meat, and rendering them loose & tender. I originally posted this recipe in March of 2024, but I’ve had a year & change to play with it, and so you’re now getting the revised edition.

I gave up on routinely using a bouquet garni, and just use a large shake of italian seasoning from a jar. Honestly, this has gone from “weekend” to “work from home weekday” for me. I’ll also scale this up to 2lbs of roast, easy. Just adjust the vegetables to match!

Ingredients

1½ lbs top round, chuck roast, or other cheap cut of beef, chunked
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 medium shallots, quartered
4-5 carrots, roughly cubed
3-4 ribs of celery, cubed
10 oz mushrooms, washed and quartered. (Optional)
1 lb small, thin-skinned potatoes, washed. Cut the larger ones down to halves or quarters. (Do this later, see preparation.)
Garlic. Lots. At least a head of cloves, maybe two.
1 cup red wine, plus some later.
1 large Tbsp beef stock concentrate (Better than Bouillon)
2 Tbsp tomato paste
Bouquet garni:
- Rosemary
- Thyme
- Parsley
- Optional oregano/marjoram
- Alternate: 2 Tbsp dry italian herb blend.
2-3 bay leaves
Ground black pepper, Salt to taste

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 275°F, with a middle rack, and set the brazier over medium heat. Add oil partway through chopping.
Wash & chop vegetables except the potatoes; cut beef into sections so that it can fit in your brazier. Pat the beef dry. Salt now, if you want to; the salt will have been drawn into the meat by the time you start browning. Optionally dredge the beef post-salting & resting in some flour. I’m lackadaisical about this step.
Once the oil’s shimmering, begin browning the chunked roast. Cook in batches, make sure to give each side time for maillard reaction.
With the roast out of the pan, pour off the fat and grease, and return about a tablespoon. The beef has almost certainly released some tallow, though top round may not offer much. Bring the pan back up to heat, then add all the vegetables (sans potatoes) in a batch, give them a fast brown.
Now that the veggies have had time to get some color, add the tomato paste and stock concentrate; give it a moment to sizzle, then add the wine. Stir to deglaze the pan & really get all that fond up. (If using dry herbs, sprinkle them in now.) Nestle the chunked meat in amidst the veggies, then place the bouquet garni (if you’re using it) and the bay leaves in around and atop the beef. Pour in some more wine if necessary, though this should be about enough for this pan. It should be visibly partway up the sides of the chunks of meat.
Cover the brazier, then place it in the oven to simmer; at hour 3 of 4, wash, cut, and add the potatoes to the pan. Stir in another large swig of wine to ensure there’s enough liquid, then cook for another hour.
Optionally: Build a quick gravy once the meat is cooked. Remove the meat & vegetables to a bowl and cover, then dissolve 1 tsp or a bit more potato starch in water, before adding to the cooking liquid. Heat the liquid to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and stir until a glossy sauce forms. Serve separate; consider stirring in some Worcestershire sauce or Red Wine Vinegar for some acid in all the richness.

Notes

We like to serve this with mashed potatoes and a salad; the garlic is excellent mashed into the potatoes, and instant potatoes can be prepared while the gravy’s forming. I’ve also done a quick instant pot risotto as a side, really just you want some sort of grain or starch to go along with the dish.

I’d recommend storing leftovers in separate components, so you have the vegetables on their own, meat on its own, and possibly the gravy on its own—or combined with the meat, especially if you didn’t add a starch so it’s just the braising liquid.

Some ideas of what to do with leftovers:

mashed veg side to a possibly milder protein
spaghetti sauce with the beef or goulash

Three Bean Chili Con Carne

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 23:09:32 -0800

This is a pretty flexible recipe. And … because I love being a PITA, this is indeed a valid chili, even with its hearty bean presence.

While my recipes usually only depend on at most a pressure cooker and a kettle, this one also expects a food processor. It’s based on the same chile purée as my Chile Colorado recipe.

Ingredients

Beans

1¼ cup dry beans, assorted (see Notes for more on bean selection.)
3-4 cups water
1 Tbsp Better than Bouillon Chicken
1 Tbsp cumin, ground
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
2 bay leaves

Chile purée

2 oz dried Guajillo, New Mexico, or other red chile
5 cloves garlic
Hot water
1/2 cup beef stock (consider Better than Bouillon here too)

Chili

16 oz ground beef/pork, optionally bison or other meat
1 medium onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 red or orange bell pepper, diced
1 Tbsp olive oil
2-3 Tbsp hatch red chile powder
1 Tbsp cumin, 1 tsp coriander seeds ground
1½ tsp oregano (Mexican, ideally)
Salt & pepper to taste
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar (optional)
circa 1 Tbsp cornmeal (for thickening) (optional! Possibly unneeded)

Preparation

Sort & rinse your beans.
Place all the ingredients from the Beans section of the ingredients in the instant pot, and set it to pressure cook on high for 1 hour, 15 minutes, then natural pressure release for 20 minutes. While this is cooking, you’ll have plenty of time for the other steps.
Pull the stems on the dried chiles, and deseed them. Tear the chiles into roughly inch-and-a-half long pieces, and place them in a heatproof bowl that’ll hold heat well. I like a big glass bowl for this.
Boil about a liter of water, and pour it over the chiles. Cover until they’re rehydrated, probably 20 minutes.
Wash & chop veggies, then set aside.
Drain your now-rehydrated chiles, and transfer them to a food processor or blender, along with the garlic and the stock. Blend/process until smooth. Optionally strain for fragments of chile skin.
Heat oil in a chef’s pan or similar over medium to medium-high heat, then add onion & sauté. Add the bell pepper and carrot and continue to cook until just browned.
Add the ground beef & cook until just browned, then turn the heat down to low.
Add the beans, then stir in the spices with the chile purée, and heat until simmering.
Check for seasoning and decide if your chile needs thickening. I usually find that this method, plus possibly some of the bean liquid, doesn’t require any further thickener.

Serve with rice, or chips and salsa, or maybe top a hot dog with it.

Notes

The beans used can vary. I like a mix of red, black, and either pinto or white beans. Sometimes I’ll use kidney beans, but they really define the cooking time for the whole batch, and that may stretch the black beans so far they disintegrate.

Cranberry sauce & variations

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 21:46:58 -0800

Ingredients

12oz cranberries, rinsed & sorted
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
Orange peel, sliced into 1mm strips, aiming for 1cm long.

Variation: Coffee-poached pears

3cups strong coffee
1½cups sugar
3 pears, peeled & halved (rub with lemon to prevent browning)

Preparation

Place main ingredients in a saucepan over medium-high heat until the cranberries come to a boil.
Reduce heat to medium low, maintaining a fast simmer until the cranberries are mostly/all broken open.
Remove main sauce from heat once the sauce has thickened to the point you want (Temps TBD)
Optional: Prepare pears & combine; if not using the pears, skip to the last instruction.
Dissolve sugar in hot coffee, then bring pears to a fast simmer.
Simmer pears until they’ve mostly saturated with sugar, and have gone mostly-translucent, ~15 minutes. Flip regularly to improve saturation.
Strain out pears & let cool until you can handle them, maybe 4 minutes.
Cube pears, removing seeds/core & strings, then stir into sauce.
Cover, pressing a plastic wrap to the surface to minimize skin-formation, then refrigerate until chilled.

Notes

The pears can certainly be prepared before the sauce, but after is fine too. The sauce won’t set in that time unless your kitchen’s a refrigerator, that’s for sure.

Low-effort baked pasta

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 01:37:51 -0700

This low-effort dish started with watching an Adam Ragusea video about baked pasta dishes not needing pre-boiling, and… I decided to just roll with it. I’m not sure what volume of meat I want, and I may substitute that with beans, especially par-boiled ones that I’ve pulled at a shorter time; this also has the space to get a bit of an adjustment towards a vodka sauce.

Ingredients

1 medium onion or 2 shallots, cubed to diced
garlic cloves, smashed & minced
red bell pepper
italian sausage (sweet or hot, unsure yet)
half a bag of spinach
22oz can crushed tomatoes
½lb pasta; something large (see Notes)
6oz mozzarella cubed
½cup ricotta, divided
salt (more than expected, for the pasta)
italian seasoning
water to cover, more on this in preparation

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350°F, with a rack in the middle. Chop vegetables, then heat a dutch oven over medium heat. Add a splash of olive oil.
Brown up sausage, add onions & bell peppers, then kill the heat.
Add the spinach, pasta, and canned tomatoes, then stir to mix and diffuse the heat before adding the mozzarella. Add the mozzarella, garlic, salt, and herbs, stir, then pour in some water to almost bring the liquids over the other ingredients, then add the ricotta.
Place uncovered in the oven, bake an hour or until the sauce has combined sufficiently.

Notes

I’ve now tried this dish with rotini, and I don’t think they worked out. I’m going to try it next with some sort of shells, and probably less meat than this previous attempt.

Chile Colorado

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:30:07 -0700

Every so often I want an excuse to make a pot of beans. This turned into an excuse to make some beans, because that was the logical accompaniment to some Chile Colorado; besides, I wanted to actually use my food processor.

Ingredients

Chile sauce

3-4oz dry California or New Mexico chiles
1pt boiling water
6 cloves garlic
12oz beef (or preferred) stock (I use Better than Bouillon)

Carne

2lb boneless pork shoulder, 1" cubed
2 Tbsp Lard/bacon grease
Dry rub blend:
- Salt
- Garlic powder
- Chili powder / Chile powder & sazón
Braise spices:
- 1½ Tbsp cumin
- 1 tsp coriander
- ⅛ tsp achiote
- dash of cinnamon
- 2-3 bay leaves
Salt to adjust, near the end.

Equipment

Dutch oven
Food processor (or blender)
Electric kettle
sieve or mesh strainer (optional)

Preparation

Cube the pork shoulder, then toss in the blended salt, garlic powder and chili powder. Set aside to rest while finishing the rest of the dish.
Boil a pint or so of water; a kettle’s useful for this step. Pull the stems, clear the seeds and strip out the ribs of the peppers, then put them in a heat-safe bowl. Once you’ve stripped all your peppers, pour the boiling water over them and rest a small plate on them to keep them under the water. Cover the bowl to retain heat, and leave it for 15 minutes.
Peel garlic, pour off the water from the peppers, transfer them into the food processor, add garlic cloves and stock, and start blending. (Optionally, strain for solids.)
Preheat the oven to 275°F. Heat lard in a dutch oven over medium-high heat, and add pork in batches. Give it time to sear before flipping, and build up some color on the meat before simmering.
Once all the meat’s browned, toss in the spices, stir to combine, and add the chile sauce. Bring to a simmer.
Lid the pot, then set in the oven to braise for 3 hours or until near falling apart. Check for seasoning when nearing ready.

Notes

I loved serving this with a batch of mildly spiced beans and rice, but I gotta try it in different contexts now. Pork shoulder just worked amazingly well.

Eggnog Pie

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 01:53:29 -0800

This recipe is how I adjusted B. Dylan Hollis’ found 1964 recipe for two crusts, although honestly I’d rather the one crust and a more solid pie. If making the single crust, use less eggnog (aim for 2 cups exactly) and only 1 cup of whipped cream, instead of stretching it as far.

Ingredients

1 9” graham cracker pie crust, or 2 6” crusts
1 (5.1oz) packet instant vanilla Jell-O pudding
2.some cups eggnog
1 and some cups whipped cream (use 2 Tbsp powdered sugar and 1/8tsp cream of tartar)

Preparation

Stir the cold eggnog into the pudding mix, let sit to mostly set.
Whip up the whipped cream.
Add whipped cream into the eggnog, folding to combine.
Pour custard into the pie crusts, chill overnight.
Serve with plain whipped cream.

Notes

I liked serving this with plain whipped cream. The dessert is itself intensely sweet, so to add just straight heavy whipping cream that just had NO₂ pumped through it gives you a great contrast for something that’s merely rich.

Honey Glazed Carrots

Tue, 26 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Ingredients

2lb large carrots cut into batons (halved baby carrots would work too)
1-2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp honey
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp granulated garlic (or a few minced cloves of fresh garlic)
1/4 tsp ground pepper

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 425°F and lightly oil the carrot batons by tossing them in a large bowl; we’ll use that bowl again later. Spread the carrots on a sheet pan, ideally into one layer. Roast for 15 minutes.
While the carrots are in their first roast, melt the butter in a small pan. Take the pan off the heat, then add the remaining ingredients. Stir.
Remove the carrots as they’re softening and taking on color, then dump them back into the bowl used in step 1. Pour the glaze over the carrots, toss, then return them to the sheet pan, and put the pan back in for about 5 minutes.
Pull the completed carrots from the oven and serve, either in a dish or directly from the sheet.

Notes

I use both granulated and fresh; fresh provides a significantly different experience.

Chicken Biryani

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 00:24:28 -0800

Ingredients

Marinade

1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 Tbsp mint, chopped
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 Tbsp garlic paste
1/2 Tbsp ginger paste
1 heaping tsp garam masala
1 1/4 tsp Kashmiri chili powder
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp (or less) salt
1/4 tsp ground turmeric

Main dish

1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs, 1 1/2 inch cube
1 cup basmati rice, rinsed and soaked for 20 minutes
8 oz of frozen mixed vegetables
2 Tbsp ghee (butter will work but with browning solids)
1/4 cup cashews
1/4 cup raisins
1 medium onion, thinly sliced in spears
3 cloves garlic, minced
Whole spices
- 1 stick Cinnamon
- 2 bay leaves
- 5 green cardamom pods (or so)
- 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 4 cloves
2 Tbsp milk, warmed
10 strands/a large pinch of saffron
1 Tbsp curry powder
1 cup water

Preparation

Combine marinade ingredients, starting with spices, then stir together. Cube chicken, mix and coat in marinade, and cover. Rest for anywhere between 30 minutes and 8 hours in the refrigerator.
Slice onions, and set the rice on to soak. Assemble whole spices in a bowl. Heat milk, then add saffron to it to steep.
Set ghee or butter in the bowl of the instant pot, set to saute. Once the butter’s melted, add the raisins and cashews, and saute for a little over 30 seconds. Reserve.
Add onions and saute until caramelized, with some still somewhat crisp. Reserve half with cashews and raisins.
Put chicken and marinade in the instant pot, and saute for 3 minutes, turning every so often. Toss in whole spices, saute for 30 seconds, then deglaze the pan, because the cooking step might trigger a burn warning otherwise. Stir in the frozen mixed vegetables now.
Spread the rice on top of the chicken & vegetables in an even layer.Sprinkle the milk and saffron evenly (or close to) across the rice, making sure that the saffron threads end up sprinkled in amongst the rice, then pour another cup of water across the pot. Pat the rice into the liquid (it’s okay if there’s some high spots, that rice will still cook but it’ll get a little crisp.)
Seal, and cook for 4 minutes on high pressure.
Natural pressure release for 10 minutes, then release remaining pressure.
To serve, wait for remaining liquid to dissipate into the dish, then sprinkle cashews, raisins and onions atop the dish. If the whole spices are easily accessible from here, pull them before topping the dish.

Serve with Raita (see notes), optionally naan or some other dish.

Notes

This recipe started out as Meeta Arora’s recipe on Piping Pot Curry; a few of the adjustments I made came from what I had on hand–but the mixed veg came from my partner’s request. I figured, why not.

Raita (mini-recipe)

Mix in a bowl:

1/6 cup finely minced onion
1 Tbsp lemon juice (or lime juice)
1 Tbsp finely minced mint leaves
1/3 cup plain yogurt
Heavy dash salt

Let sit for the onions to slightly cure in the acid, then serve.

Black Lentil Biryani

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My boyfriend had a simple request: a biryani that they could handle with a very raw throat. They were in the mood for lentils, and I am always down for some pulses. So, with that in mind I envisioned this dish here. This one is still a work in progress, it needs some refinement.

Ingredients

1 cup black (beluga/caviar) lentils, sorted & rinsed
1½ cups basmati rice, rinsed
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 coloured bell pepper (red/yellow/orange), diced
3-4 cloves garlic, mashed and minced
3½ cups chicken stock
Salt to taste (plenty)
Garam masala, 1½-2 Tbsp
2 bay leaves
1½ Tbsp olive oil

Preparation

Wash and prep veggies, rinse and sort lentils & rice, prepare stock.
Start the olive oil in an instant pot on simmer, and once the oil’s hot toss in the onions with a pinch of salt to start their browning.
Once the onions are well along, add the peppers and make sure the rest of the ingredients are close to hand.
Once the peppers have also sautéed to your preferred level, turn off the pot before tossing in the garlic (and any ginger if you minced up ginger as well, optionally) and the spices, including the salt and bay leaves.
Stir gently to combine before tossing in the rice and lentils, stir, then pour in the stock. For this dish, we’re using 2x volume of lentils and 1x volume of rice as our metric for the liquids; the goal is that most will be absorbed when we’re done.
Start the Instant Pot on high/more pressure, set to 10 minutes, and let vent naturally for 15 minutes afterwards. This is a fairly uninvolved recipe once it’s started, and the end result has a captivating flavour.

Serve alone or with garlic naan.

Notes

The long pull for this dish is the lentils; a cooking time of about 10 mintues should be enough for that to sort itself out though.

Beef Stew

Sat, 14 Jan 2023 21:59:59 -0800

After some recent experiments, I decided to try building a classic beef stew. This and the lamb bean stew are variations on a theme, and should be approached as such.

I really wanted a fairly standard American beef stew; I’d probably also add potatoes, since they’ll come out tender as well.

Ingredients

2 lbs beef roast, cubed to about an inch
1 cup white beans, sorted, rinsed, soaked overnight (I used Rancho Gordo Cassoulet beans)
2 onions
3 carrots
3 stalks celery
several cloves garlic, minced
italian seasonings, paprika, salt, black pepper, bay leaf
flour for beef
1 cup red wine
beef better than boullion
starch for thickening after

Preparation

Cube vegetables and beef, stripping off any large pieces of fat. If there’s a fat cap on your roast, don’t toss it! Render out that tallow for the cooking grease, as you prepare your cast iron for sautéeing the vegetables and browning the beef. Pour off the grease, leaving enough for sautéeing vegetables.
Set up a pressure cooker, and put drained beans, 1½ cups beef stock, 1 cup red wine, seasonings in.
Once you’ve sautéed the vegetables, add them to the pressure cooker, and re-grease the pan. If you didn’t render enough grease to have some left over here, add olive oil. Once the pan’s up to temp, add the beef. Let it brown for a few moments, before sprinkling on flour, salt, and pepper; stir to coat, and produce a roux. Add the beef and the roux to the pressure cooker, scraping the pan down.
Seal the pressure cooker and cook on high, or “more; high” if your unit has both options. 15 minutes natural release; after 15 minutes, flip the release valve.
After the stew’s cooked, ensure the beans are tender. The beef will be almost certainly be tender. Take some broth in a bowl, add some water, and stir in corn starch for thickening; we’re aiming for a nice thick consistency.

Notes

This almost certainly works with lamb too, but the seasonings might need adjustment.

black bean tacos

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 20:47:32 -0800

This is one of my college recipes–I ended up stretching my food budget pretty far by sticking to vegetarian meals. This is an interesting one, because it’s sort of a jumping-off point for a few more recipes; see the notes.

Ingredients

1 can black beans (1 cup prepared, 1/3-1/2 cup dried; you can do with more beans in this recipe, so err high)
1 medium onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
1 bell pepper of your colour choice, diced
½ cup roasted corn, frozen (fresh, if you have it?) (Optional)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 Tbsp tomato paste
2 tsp cider vinegar
1½ Tbsp Adobo seasoning (cumin, coriander, dash of ground black pepper, some salt, oregano)
½ tsp ground chipotle pepper
Sour cream and grated cheese for toppings
6 flour tortillas

Preparation

Wash and cut vegetables, then start heating oil in a chef’s pan or similar over medium heat. Once the oil’s shimmering hot, add the onions and sauté until translucent, before adding the carrot.
Once the onions are lightly browned and the carrot has picked up some colour, add the bell pepper. If you’re using other vegetables (see notes), now is a good time to add them. Sauté until peppers have softened and ideally caramelized a bit.
Add the garlic, spices, and tomato paste, then reduce temperature, deglaze with vinegar and add the beans with their liquor. Stir to combine, and bring the beans up to a simmer. At this point, if you need to, add some liquid; for this, I use vegetable broth–normally from concentrate, I don’t bother to keep stock on hand mostly.
(Optional) Once the beans are at a simmer, add the corn. It’ll be heated through by the time you serve the tacos.

Notes

Go wild on the added vegetables; personally, I’d focus on ingredients from the Americas here–squash would be the principal other addition I’d add. Leafy greens are a skip, though. You can shred them as a topping, but cooking them in won’t work well here. Mushrooms are another really good addition to make, to increase that meatiness.

This dish is, in some ways, a jumping-off point. This recipe specifically calls for flour tortillas, however it would also work over rice. Using smaller street taco style tortillas, this can be a side or part of a larger meal, whereas adding some eggs, either fried or cracked into and poached in the simmering beans, gets you something like huevos rancheros. Lastly, it could even probably be cooked down a little farther, formed, and fried to make fritters–maybe with some added corn starch or cornmeal; I haven’t tried this method yet.

spaghetti bake

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 21:24:30 -0800

Baked spaghetti is just really satisfying sometimes, but making a big sauce is a whole lot like time I could spend doing not at the stove. Instead, store bought marinara (or whichever sauce you’d prefer, tomato sauces will hold up better in the oven) comes in clutch. Sometimes there’s a benefit to being lazy, and here it’s a comforting meal with relatively little investment.

Ingredients

12oz spaghetti
16 oz italian sausage, crumbled
32-36 oz jar marinara
8 oz melting cheese (mozzarella, monterey jack, etc.)
1 oz garnish cheese (parmesean, asiago, etc.)
1 medium onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, minced, or a head of roasted garlic, squeezed
2 tsp italian seasoning
½ tsp paprika
1 Tbsp olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Preparation

Heat oven to 400°F, setting up a middle rack, and put a pot of water on to boil. Wash & cut veggies. Grate the cheese.
Set a chef’s pan over medium heat, adding olive oil. Crumble the italian sausage in once the oil is shimmering, then brown. Strain cooked sausage from the pan and reserve.
Add onion to the rendered fat from the sausage, and cook until lightly browned and translucent. Add the bell pepper, and sweat. Lastly, toss in the herbs, paprika, and garlic.
Stir momentarily, then add marinara. At this point, re-add the sausage, and bring to a light simmer, before reducing heat.
While pasta sauce is heating, attention moves to the spaghetti. Salt the water to your preference, then add the spaghetti. I prefer to split it in half here, since long strands will work to your detriment later, and cook until just under done; the near edge of al dente is perfect. My current pasta provides an 11 minute cook time; I cooked mine to 9 minutes, the near edge of ready.
As the pasta cooks, spray down a hotel pan or sufficiently deep baking dish with baking spray.
Strain pasta into a holding bowl. Add about half of the pasta to the hotel pan, then stir in about half the sauce, enough to incorporate. Grate some melting cheese (maybe a little under half) into the pan, then combine the remaining sauce with the remaining pasta in the holding bowl–making sure to drain the pasta well first–so as to not disturb the cheese layer when adding the remaining pasta into the dish. Layer this top portion on, then top with melting and garnish cheese, mixed.
Wrap with foil, bake for 20 minutes on the middle rack.
Unwrap, and set the oven to broil. Leaving the rack in the centre, broil another roughly 3 minutes. This crisps up the cheese and lends it that baked-parmesean flavour.

Notes

I use a hotel pan for this dish because it’s that matching top surface to pan bottom ratio; the sides don’t slump from being too understructured for the firm top. I recognize that hotel pans aren’t standard home kitchen equipment; a 9x13 baking dish would probably also work.

I’ll be honest, this is a “throw together with grocery store ingredients” recipe. My local grocery stores all have take-and-bake garlic bread, and I am definitely not above grabbing one of those and tossing it in the oven partway through this bake. There are some extra steps here to note:

Store-bought Garlic bread addendum

At roughly 7 minutes remaining, place foil-wrapped garlic bread on the middle rack alongside the pan.
If you prefer a soft-crusted garlic bread, you can stop here.

(Optional) When turning the oven up to broil, take the loaf out and unwrap it. Return the bread to the oven to bake uncovered.
Broil for a couple of minutes, until your preference.

Braised Lentil Pasta

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 16:17:36 -0800

This recipe dates back to my college years. I built it as a way to try out a few flavor ideas, and because I was still figuring out what all I could do with lentils–I’d gotten stuck in thinking of them as being in curries only. Now I grin wryly at my naïveté, but this recipe stuck around. It’s rich from the Balsamic and the butter at the end, and it’s got great contrasts in texture.

Ingredients

200g short pasta
¾ cup brown lentils, sorted & rinsed
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
6 oz mushrooms, sliced (optional)
2 tsp italian seasoning
½ tsp paprika
1½ Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar
pepper flakes as desired
salt & pepper to taste

Preparation

Set water on to boil for pasta, and start lentils simmering in a separate pot; bring the lentils to a boil, and after 10 minutes reduce heat to a simmer & cover. Wash & cut vegetables. Cook the lentils until they’re tender.
Strain the lentils, rinsing them down with some cool water to halt their cooking. Wipe out the pan used for the lentils.
Heat olive oil in the cleaned pan over medium heat, then add onion & sauté until golden before adding (optionally) the mushrooms, then after sweating the mushrooms, add the bell pepper. Use additional oil as needed here, the mushrooms especially can be thirsty.
Once the vegetables have been fully sautéed, add the spices and herbs, garlic, and deglaze with (ideally) a cooking wine. Re-add the lentils, and pour in the vinegar with the lentils. Reduce heat to low, and cover.
Start the pasta after adding the lentils, and once the pasta is done retain some pasta water for the starch. Strain and add the pasta to the lentils, stirring in the butter as well to mount and form a glossy sauce. If the sauce isn’t loose enough, add some pasta water and stir to bloom the starch.

Garnish with grating cheese, serve with a crusty bread.

Dal Makhani

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 00:51:22 -0800

One of my first introductions to Costco was Tasty Bite’s Madras Lentils, which was a staple lunch for me in high school. Years later, I encountered this dish (well, not this exact recipe) at a pop-up lunch counter at work, and decided to adapt it for my own kitchen.

My choice of beans here is actually a bit of a mistranslation; the recipes I read referred to black lentils, but this seems to be another term for black gram bean–a relative of mung beans, but not the same. Instead, I cook this as a three-pulse curry, including both mung beans and Western black lentils; I like the overlap in textures and styles.

This recipe is a loose adaptation of the version from Piping Pot Curry.

Ingredients

¾ cup black lentils
¼ cup green mung beans (green gram)
¼ cup kidney beans
3 cups water or stock, divided
½ cup heavy cream
1 large onion, diced
3 Tbsp garlic, minced
3 Tbsp ginger, minced
2 Tbsp tomato paste
2 Tbsp butter, divided
1 tsp cumin, whole
1 Tbsp garam masala
½ to 1 Tbsp Kashmiri chili powder
½ Tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp Turmeric powder
Salt to taste

Preparation

At least four hours before preparing this dish, rinse the pulses and set them up to soak. This can be done up to 12 hours in advance–but your beans might go ahead and sprout if you’re not too careful. The lentils can be included here, but it’s far from necessary. They’ll be tender in the final dish if they’re cooked from dry.
Prepare your vegetables; in a bowl, combine the tomato paste with some water, stirring until the paste has hydrated into a thick sauce. This water should be subtracted from the 3 cups used for cooking the dish overall later; otherwise, your curry might be a little soupy.
Set your instant pot to sauté on high, and add about a tablespoon of butter. Toast the cumin in the butter, then add the onions and cook until softened and translucent, a few minutes.
Add the aromatics, sauté until fragrant, then add the remaining spices and bloom. If some garam masala has stuck to the bottom of the pan, don’t worry; adding the tomato sauce now gives you a chance to unstick anything that’s built up a fond on the bottom of the cooker bowl. I find that this is a great time to check for seasoning adjustments–remembering that the beans are still unseasoned, so the current flavor is stronger than the finished dish.
Drain your bean mix and add it to the pot, then add the remainder of the 3 cups of water. Stir to ensure everything’s well combined, then close the pressure cooker, make sure the release is set to seal, and start the cooker on high for 30 minutes, or until the kidney beans will take to cook. I’ve found this can be anywhere up to 50 minutes.
(Now is a great time to kick off the rice; in my rice cooker, it’s usually done right around when the instant pot finishes up.) Once the cooker stops, let it naturally release for at least 10 minutes; I let it go for over 20, and it was still highly pressurized when I popped the release.
After release, leave the lid off for a few minutes and stir in half a cup of heavy cream. Restore the lid until you’re ready to serve, then optionally stir in a pat of cold butter to up the gloss of the dal.

Red lentil soup

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 01:10:56 -0800

Ingredients

3/4 cup red lentils, sorted & rinsed
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 medium onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, smashed & minced
1 carrot, finely diced
2 Tbsp olive oil
1+ Tbsp Ras el Hanout seasoning blend
1 tsp salt
2 bay leaves

Preparation

Wash and prepare vegetables, and heat olive oil to shimmering in a saucepan.
Sauté onions until golden, then add carrots and cook until just starting to caramelize.
Add garlic, Ras el Hanout, salt, and lentils, stirring to combine, then pour in the stock, toss the bay leaves in for flavour, and cover.
Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until lentils have dissolved into the dish; add additional water as needed.

Serve with cheese & crackers, or other appropriate sides.

Pannekoeken

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 22:46:26 -0800

I’ve heard a few names for this. “Dutch Baby” is common, sometimes “Dutch Pancake” or “German Pancake”. I dunno, my parents called it “Pannekoeken”, so I call it that.

Ingredients

60g butter
250g eggs (or 5 large)
240g milk (~1 cup)
120g flour (~1 cup)
1.5g salt
Vanilla to taste

Preparation

Lightly oil a cast iron skillet, then place it in the lower third of the cold oven. Start the oven, set it to 375F.
Crack the eggs into a bowl, then whisk until totally combined and slightly foamy before adding the milk and vanilla, then whisking until all ingredients are uniform.
Sift the flour while whisking, stopping frequently to whisk down any accumulated flour on the sides. Whisk in the salt, as well.
By now the oven should have come up to temp. Give the pan a few more minutes to get ripping hot, then using a mitt set the pan on a heat-safe surface, before adding the butter.
Once the butter’s melted, roll it around the pan somewhat to coat the sides as far up as you feel comfortable, then set the pan back down & pour in the batter.
Return the pan to the oven, and bake for 25 minutes or until the sides have crisped up and the top has risen significantly, ideally gaining a crust too.
Let sit for a few minutes before transferring the pannekoeken from the pan to a cutting board. With practice, the bottom of the pannekoeken should lift free effortlessly, due to the non-stick layer of butter.

Serve with maple syrup or other toppings.

Notes

I have used both 250g and 300g of egg, not changing other ratios, and I like both.
This dish can be modified lots of ways. Additions are a common way, usually some sort of fruit compote or sauce, or savory items like sausage.
This is a dish that can be basically run as a hot-pan operation–have a batch whipped up to pour as one comes out; you can stretch a single pan to about 400g egg/380g milk/190g flour to serve 3, but after that you’ll need to pour a second immediately.

Yorkshire pudding

A variation on this recipe is the Yorkshire Pudding: it’s the same ingredients (less the vanilla), but less egg–three instead of five, and you let the batter sit for at least an hour at room temperature first. A true Yorkshire pud is also cooked in beef drippings, but it’s interesting to me that this is essentially a root recipe for a bunch of dishes, just prepared ever so slightly differently.

Jambalaya fifteen bean stew

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 22:46:15 -0800

The standard Hambeens recipe¹ asks for a mirepoix, and since this flavour combo is much closer to a Jambalaya, especially with the andouille… well, using les trois sœurs is a good translation. The recipe it started from includes okra, and that would probably be good.

Ingredients

20oz bag of Hambeens 15-bean soup mix
7 cups stock
12oz package of andouille sausage links
1.5-2 Tbsp Penzey’s Cajun spice blend
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 medium bell pepper, diced
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

Preparation

Wash & prep vegetables, slice the andouille into halved coins by first cutting the sausage length-wise before then slicing it into half-moons. Start oil heating in the insert of an instant pot.
When the oil’s shimmering, add the sausage and let it brown up a bit. Remove to a tray and reserve, draining the accumulated fat back into the pan. Next, add the onion and sauté until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the carrots and, shortly after, the pepper, and sauté until softened and darkened. Add the garlic and Penzey’s blend, then turn off the instant pot.
Pour in the stock to deglaze, then add the rinsed & sorted bean mix. Stir to combine, then seal and start on high pressure for 50 minutes.
When the cooker’s done, let it naturally release for 20 minutes, then re-add the sausage and let it heat through.

Serve with rice.

Hurst’s Hambeens Instant Pot Cajun 15-Bean soup ↩︎

Lamb bean stew

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 22:45:49 -0800

The inspiration for this dish started with a pairing I’d been meaning to try, getting the richness of the lamb paired with the creamy bean texture. The farro’s starch provides the necessary body to the gravy here, and ‘cause the whole grains are sturdy enough to stand up to being cooked way past their usual time, they still come out great!

Ingredients

1.5 lbs cubed lamb shoulder
3/4 cup farro
1 cup white beans, sorted & rinsed
1 onion, diced
3 carrots, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 can diced tomatoes, liquid drained & reserved
1 cup red wine
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 cups total tomato juice & chicken stock – see note
Couple sprigs of thyme & rosemary, stripped and minced
Paprika, ground pepper, salt to taste.

Note on stock: I use Better than Bouillon chicken stock here, but I take the reserved tomato juice and pour boiling water into it until I have 3 cups, then add enough stock concentrate. The goal here is to get the correct amount of liquid for the beans and the farro, but not to make a soup. From experience, I know farro takes about twice its volume in liquid, while beans-especially navy or great northern-need 2.5x the liquid. Therefore I need 1.5c for the farro, and 2.5c for the beans. The vegetables and lamb will be fine–but more about that later.

Preparation

Wash & chop veggies & lamb, prepare beans, set aside liquids. Turn on your Instant Pot to sauté on high, then add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.
Once the oil is shimmering, lay in a single layer of lamb. Don’t overcrowd it, let it sit and brown. Flip each piece to evenly brown, then remove to a plate to drain. Brown all the lamb, then we’ll move on to the veggies.
Add the onions and stir to achieve a uniform layer. Once the onions have picked up some colour and you can hear more sizzle than steam, introduce the carrots and stir.
Once the carrots are also sufficiently sautéed, add the tomatoes & garlic, stir, add spices, stop the heat, add the wine & stir to deglaze, followed by the stock, beans, and farro. You can add the lamb now or later, see note.
Close the lid and start the instant pot on high pressure for 50 minutes (or as long as you normally cook white beans for–with very new beans I’ve had good results from as little as 40 minutes. Farro and other grains take about 12 minutes to cook, so you won’t be undercooking the grain.)
Let the stew naturally release for around 20 minutes. If you held the meat, now is a good time to re-add it and get it back up to temp.

Serve with crusty bread.

Notes

If the lamb is added before pressure cooking, it’ll be very thoroughly cooked! However, if it’s left to sit covered, it may be considered unsafe on some diets. So, choose your adventure here. The lamb will be definitely cooked if inserted, but very dry. It’ll come back up to temp just fine if re-added.

Baked beans

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 22:45:40 -0800

I’ve seen a bunch of recipes for baked beans that use ketchup, bbq sauce, and molasses. This is pretty funny to me since I’d describe a basic bbq sauce as ketchup blended with molasses … and so I figured it’d be worth building a recipe that increases the quantity of vinegar and molasses, and substitute in tomato paste to replace the ketchup.

By doing this, you can also delay adding your vinegar, holding its snap until the end.

Ingredients

1 cup white beans (Great Northern and Yellow Eye are both great)
2 cups water/stock
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
4-5 rashers bacon, chopped (~1/6 lb?)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 Tbsp mustard (2 tsp dry)
2 oz tomato paste
1/2 tsp smoked paprika, pepper, salt
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

Preparation

Wash, prepare vegetables and bacon. Sort, then rinse the beans. Optionally, soak the beans beforehand. Set the instant pot to saute, and add olive oil. Once the oil is shimmering, add the bacon.
Let the bacon fry, then once it’s mostly browned, add the onions. Saute until the onions have browned and are sizzling more than steaming, add the tomato paste to saute for a moment before turning off the instant pot, then adding garlic and spices. If you’re using dry mustard, add it now.
Deglaze with stock, stirring to combine, and incorporate the molasses and sugar. Seal and start the pressure cooker on high† for 50 minutes (or your preferred bean-cooking duration.)
Once the cooker is done, natural pressure release for 15-20 minutes, then stir in apple cider vinegar. If using prepared mustard, stir it in now.

Notes

† If your pressure cooker has both pressure (low, high) and temperature (less, normal, more) options, make sure you use the high pressure, more temperature setting. Otherwise, your beans may take some time!
The sauce may be a little thin at the end of cooking; it can be left with a loose-fitting lid on slow cook on high to reduce the broth more.