Beans!

Once again, recipe ADD has me in a tizzy this week - I've somehow managed to purchase ingredients for curried lentils and potatoes, black bean sweet potato almond burgers, and chickpea quinoa burgers... ACK! I've decided for now to go with the black beans. Luckily enough, my first copy of Cooks Illustrated arrived this week with an article on how to make the best Cristianos y Moros (rice & beans in less than PC terms) using a dutch oven. I decided to use their method of flavorful bean cooking as the base for my burgers.  But, since I would prefer to be able to cook beans in the crock pot while I'm at work, I started a similar batch that will be prepared with the exact same ingredients in the crock pot. Then I can compare the two versions! That is, if I can resist converting the dutch oven version to the Cristianos y Moros recipe...

The beans are currently spending the night soaking (1 c. black beans in 2 quarts water + 1 1/2 Tbs salt. I may regret the high salt amount later....) Tomorrow, the cook off!

Update: The crock pot beans were rinsed after a 10 hour soak and put back in the crock pot with 6 c. water, a half onion, a large chunk of carrot, a rib of celery, 5 garlic cloves, 4 bay leaves, a 1/4 - 1/2 cube of veggie bouillon and half a red pepper. Turned them on for 8 hours on low.

Dutch oven beans continue to soak while I am at work...