Baked Beans A La Différence
Equipment
- Pressure cooker (optional)
Ingredients
- 400g dry white beans eg haricot, cannellini or 2X 400g cans cooked white beans
Base (soffritto)
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 red onion
- 1 small carrot
- 1 stick celery
Sauce
- 1 400g tin tomatoes or 4-5 fresh plum tomatoes
- 2 tbsp vinegar eg apple cider
- 1-2 tsp brown sugar, agave or maple syrup or stevia
Condiments
- 2 tsp Korean gochujang or 1tsp Spanish smoky paprika (optional)
- 1/2 tsp za-atar or any combination of thyme, oregano and marjoram
- salt to taste
Instructions
Dry Beans Without Pressure Cooker
- If you're using tinned beans skip this step
- soak the beans in plentiful water 6-8 hours or overnight
- discard the soaking water and rinse the beans under a running tap
- cook the beans generously covered with water with a teaspoon of salt for around 1 hour or until tender but not mushy
No-soak Beans In A Pressure Cooker
- place the beans with 4 times their volume of waterf and teaspoon of salt in the pressure cooker and cook on a low flame at high pressure for around 20 minutes. But please note that the cooking times will depend on the type and also age of your beans. Turn off the flame and allow the pressure to come down gradually to ambient pressure (about 15 minutes)
Make The Sauce
- scrape the carrot and celery stick, or peel using a vegetable peeler, then chop very finely
- finely chop the onion and garlic
- saute all the above in a pan with a little oil. When the mixture is well covered in oil pop a lid on and cook until very soft (this can take 15-20 minutes). Avoid browning by adding a large pinch of salt and an occasional small splash of water
- Cut fresh tomatoes in quarters and liquidze in a blender. Chop whole tinned tomatoes
- add the tomatoes, za'atar herb mix and gochujang or paprika
- Add the "sugar" and vinegar
- cook the sauce for 10-15 minutes
Purée The Sauce
- purée in a globlet blender or a hand-held to a very smooth sauce
- adjust the seasoning, sweetness and acidity to your taste
Stovetop Baked Beans
- Add in the cooked beans to the sauce and and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring gently so as not to break the beans. Add a little water if the sauce gets too think
Oven Baked Beans
- put the beans and sauce into an ovenproof dish with a good lid. If you don't have a lid cover the beans with tin foil, sealing it well to retain the steam
- bake in a medium low oven for one to one and a half hours