Mexican beans
Mexican food is another favourite of ours around here. I love how versatile a batch of Mexican beans can be, you can serve them with brown rice, or in nachos, burritos, enchiladas, tacos, quesedillas or even on a gourmet baked potato.
Usually I use tinned kidney beans, but recently I have acquired several types of dried beans from family and ex-housemates. Just this week, Melissa from Frugal and Thriving posted about cooking and freezing dried beans, so I decided to give it a go. While my beans were free, dried beans are much cheaper than tinned ones, and can be easily frozen until you need them. You can find them in your local Asian or Indian supermarket.
I soaked about three cups of kidney beans for almost 24 hours, which is probably longer than is necessary, but that’s how it fit into my day. I then rinsed them and picked out any broken beans, and placed them in a pot with fresh water, then simmered them for one and a half hours, until the beans were tender. This made about seven cups of cooked beans. I used them to make a triple batch of my Mexican beans (recipe below). The photos are of my triple batch, so don’t worry if your batch isn’t as big!
Mexican beans (serves 3)
Ingredients
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 2 cups cooked kidney beans
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
- 1 tin of diced tomatoes
- 1/3 green pepper, diced
- 1/2 cup water
- Salt
Method
Prepare the dried beans as outlined above
Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onion, garlic and spices and fry for 2-3 minutes, until onion is translucent.
Add beans, green pepper and diced tomatoes and water. Bring to the boil and simmer for about twenty minutes, until the mixture thickens. Mash beans with a potato masher until you have achieved your preferred consistency (I like to mash about half of the beans). Add salt to taste.
Serve with brown rice, tortilla chips or in tortillas. Tonight I rolled the beans in a tortilla with some cheese and cooked it in the sandwich press, then topped it with diced tomato, baby spinach, jalepenos, avocado, Greek yogurt, chilli sauce and lime juice. Yum!
Continue reading here: Homemade Felafel That Doesn’t Fall Apart
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