Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Make it yourself!

I've had some loverly black beans in Mexican restaurants recently, so I decided to branch out and go for black beans rather than refried (which I actually have a love/hate relationship with) in for my last mexican feast (Mexican food gets a bad rap, but it is SO SO easy to do "healthy").

I wasn't sure if people used canned beans, or what, so I went to the supermarket and explored. No black beans in the Mexican section, so I grabbed a backup tin of refried and checked out the normal bean aisle. Loads of options there, mostly around $3 per can.

The next day I did a brief google to see what people were up to, and I took away a few hints from various sites (if only I had the foresight to take notes). When I got home, I got to play!

I cooked an onion with some garlic, then added beans, stock, cracked pepper, chilli powder, cumin and (because I'm lazy and it's awesome) some Old El Paso taco mix. Partially crushed the beans with a fork and let them cook!



They were just divine :)

I grabbed a w/w tortilla and made a quick quesadilla, and served it with a tasty mexi-salad.



I ate part of the quesdilla opened up and stuffed with salad. MMM!

The beans froze well, and I enjoyed 3-4 meals from that can. Will definitely be putting black beans on my list of staples. Any suggestions for making great beans onion free (hubs is mental and doesn't like onions... sigh)

3 comments:

  1. Do you have a copy of the Moosewood Cookbook? If you can find some dried black beans then I can recommend the black bean soup in there. Delicious! That recipe has orange juice in it but I've swapped out the orange juice for water before, added extra tomatoes, chilli, chorizo - whatever I have on hand, and it always tastes great!

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  2. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Delicious-Black-Bean-Burritos/Detail.aspx

    This is one of our favorite black bean recipes. I doubt it's super healthy for you because of the cream cheese, but you could easily omit the onions. It really is fantastic.

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  3. Ooh- thanks both!

    Pip- I think my stepmum does, I'll hit her up!

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