Did you know you can brine beans?
You just finished putting dishes away, wiping the counters, and scrubbing the sink with vinegar (everyone loves a shiny sink!). You’re off to bed, but not before spending a whole 60 seconds of active time soaking dry beans in water with salt and baking soda while you get your beauty sleep.
Sounds like the perfect night for beans that maintain their pretty jackets and hold up to long cooking times while keeping their insides creamy and silky.
I always wondered how they do it when you open a can of Gigante beans, or when you get a deli cup of big beans in escabeche from the fancy olive bar at Whole Foods and they’re perfectly firm and creamy every single time. How. do. they. do. it.
I remember watching my mom adding a pinch of baking soda to black beans. I never knew why. She is mysterious. But Cook’s Illustrated, Tasting Table, and molecular biologist, Nik Sharma for Serious Eats, have all demystified my mom’s secret.
Put simply, soaking beans in a solution of salt and baking soda yields creamy, cooked beans in less time. That’s your brine. Drain, rinse well, and cook for the most velvety texture.
My mind naturally went to tinga flavors for these beans. I’ve been craving tinga sans de pollo. Tinga is one of the first dishes you learn to cook when you leave home. It’s versatile enough to be slipped into a nixtamal tortilla, on a tostada topped with crema and lettuce, or even served as a guisado next to a pile of rice.
Tinga tastes a lot more complex than the simplicity of its parts: canned tomatoes to make it a year-round dish, canned chipotles in adobo, broth, cumin, onions, and garlic. I like adding apple cider vinegar before removing it from the heat to bring some brightness.
Ok to ceviche-fy it.
I went big for this recipe and used Royal Corona beans from Rancho Gordo for a more substantial and meaty bite. You can also find them labeled as Gigante or butter beans, or in Mexican markets as alubias, just look for the biggest size you can find, but you may need to shorten the cooking time if using a smaller bean, just taste and test along the way for doneness.
The brined beans cook in the sauce until creamy inside and know that their jackets will not fall apart. The sauce is well, saucy, thick, and addictive. I serve it with a side of out-of-the-salad bag baby kale (you can also use arugula, Swiss chard, and little gems) and toss them in a crema dressing made with lime zest, juice, and cilantro. It works in the same way lettuce and crema get piled up on a tostada de tinga.
Make this Tinga de Beans for your friends, veg and non-veg. Tell them you brined the beans overnight, and how you only do that for the people you love.
On this week’s recipe mixtape, some tropical neo trova by Rosas from Sinaloa, Roberto Carlos Lange’s Ecuadorian sounds with Helado Negro, and Kevin Kaarl from Meoqui, Chihuahua to set the mood for a bean club dinner party.