Red Beans and Rice -- SUCCESS!

If you read about my first adventure with red beans and rice, you probably were able to pick up on my disappointment and failure.  As a follow up to that story, though, I am happy to report much great success and joy.

Lesson learned from first attempt at this dish – use a big bowl and plenty of water when soaking the beans.

Dry beans in big bowl.  Plenty of room to expand -- or at least I was hoping so.

Ready for a soakin' - this time with plenty of water.  More than enough!  Water is cheap, after all.

<<Insert choir of angels singing the joy of enough water and plenty of room for soaking>>

What a relief to see the beans still in water!  Now that this worry was over, I could get started on the recipe!  As I mentioned in my last post, I used the recipe from The Joy of Southern Cooking.  None of the ingredients were that unusual, which is what I was hoping for.  Typical things this recipe called for included celery, onion, garlic, green pepper, kielbasa, broth and a slew of spices.

The Trinity (onion, bell pepper, celery) plus garlic -- chopped and ready to throw in the pot.

Once all of the chopping was finished, it was time to start cooking things down.  Pretty much all of the ingredients for the red beans were added within a matter of minutes.  Then, the waiting began again.

Come on a my house, my house I'm gonna cook a you everything!

I kept a close eye on my boiling pot, well I guess it was simmering.  After a couple of hours I could see progress was being made!  It was time to start the rice.  This was no ordinary rice.  It was like, crazy rice.  The rice recipe called for ham and chicken broth instead of water – boy oh boy!

Why yes!  Those are chunks of ham cooking with the rice. 

Finally, after one failure and then probably six hours of cooking, the red beans and rice were ready to go.  And they were delicious. 

After hours of toiling away --- voila!  Red beans and rice is served.