Red Beans & Rice

Who needs Popeye’s red beans & rice when you can make them yourself at home . And with instapot making this red bean & rice is so easy and quick . No soaking beans overnight required and it only takes a little bit over an hour to get this to your dinner table . My family loves red beans & rice , and this time i make sure i blog about it before i forget , like i did the first time .

I read somewhere to make an authentic red beans & rice , you need to use Camellia Red Beans , one of these days i will need to try using that . I do have some friends from Louisiana , who said that i really don’t need to use that particular red beans to make a good red beans & rice . So following their instruction i used red kidney beans , and then i was also told i can use dry great northern beans too . Oh yes , def have to use dry beans , no canned beans . I ended up mixing the red kidney beans with great northern beans . Also this time around i added smoked pork hock and it turned out really good .

If you don’t have instapot , you can always use dutch oven . Probably you will need to soak the dry beans overnight to cut down the cooking time . And of course it’s going to take longer cooking it with dutch oven . But either way , it should turn out yummy too .

Ingredients :

• 1 cup of dry red kidney beans
• 3/4 cup of dry great northern beans
• 2 stalks of celery , chopped
• 1 whole green pepper , chopped
• 1 fresh jalapeno , chopped
• 1 large onion
• 6 cloves of garlic , minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 2 tsp of dry basil
• 2 tsp chicken bouillon cube ( optional )
• few dash of tony’s creole seasoning
• salt and pepper
• 1 smoked pork hock
• 1 lb of andouille sausage , diced

Directions :

• In instapot with saute feature , brown the sausage and the veggies , along with the pork hock for few minutes .
• Add the beans , bay leaves , thyme and the rest of seasoning .
• Add about 6-7 cups of water , close the lid . Turn to pressure cooking , set time to 55 minutes . Let it sit for extra 15 minutes after before releasing the vent .
• Took few cups out , and start mashing up the beans , pour it back into the pot . Saute again until it gets thick .
• Serve the red beans with rice in a bowl and mix . Top with chopped green onions and mix !