Earlier this month I mentioned a frugal challenge called “weekly beans.” DF and I have vowed to make beans the focus of at least one meal a week. In part that’s because of inflation, which is scaring our frugal pants off right now. Mostly, though, it’s because we have so many beans in storage.
Sure, they’ll keep indefinitely (or what passes for indefinitely at our ages). But why have them, so why not eat them? Especially since they were bought at a lower price than they go for now, and since they’re good for us, and since they’re so darned tasty?
The week after that post we used the seasoned black beans from the freezer for rice bowls and burritos. The last few spoons of beans went into a soup made from boiling bag broth, to add some additional heft (and nutrition) to the carrots, potatoes, onions and homegrown celery.
Last week I announced that I would cook a few cups of pinto beans. Most would go into the freezer for future chili. But some would go into a recipe that I couldn’t get out of my brain: pinto bean bread.
Once I saw that, I couldn’t un-see it. The same is true of things like ketchup cookies and Kool-Aid pickles. It isn’t just a good idea to try these things. It’s the law.
Pinto bean bread isn’t a new thing, but it was certainly new to me. This particular recipe came from a blog called A Farm Girl in the Making. The blogger, Ann Accetta-Scott, called it a “stick-to-your-bones and fill you up kinda recipe.”
She’s not wrong.
Pinto bean bread isn’t made only of beans. There’s cornmeal, buttermilk, eggs and a few other things as well. It’s a basic quick-bread recipe, baked in a loaf pan. Accetta-Scott described it as being similar to banana bread – not in taste, but in texture and ease of preparation.
For my purposes, it was a way of incorporating beans into a supper, as per our self-imposed mandate. It was also a way of getting “pinto bean bread” out of my brain.
Bean bread, not bacon bread
I opted to add the bacon fat she suggested, figuring it would give the finished product a more tender crumb. (More on that below.)
What it mostly did was give the batter such a pronounced bacon flavor that I thought, “This will never do.” I mean, I like bacon but this was bean bread, not bacon bread.
Having added the recipe’s optional two tablespoons of sugar, I tasted it again. Wham: Salt and fat right between the eyes. A little brown sugar, and…still super-porky. So I pulled out the molasses jar and started dribbling and tasting, dribbling and tasting.
When I finally had a flavor that wasn’t all-pig, I used the potato masher to crush the beans that the mixer hadn’t pulverized. As it baked, the smell was unfamiliar but pleasant; slightly sweet, but definitely not banana bread.
How did it turn out?
It tasted…interesting. In this case, “interesting” was not code for “eeewww.” Most of the sweetness had disappeared into the bean and corn flavors. The bacon was still recognizable, but no longer overwhelming. Every now and then I’d get a bite that had more bean than the others, which was like eating…beans. It tasted beany.
The tender-crumb part never materialized. It shed bits when we sliced it, and when we buttered it, and when we broke off pieces to eat. Every so often I’d push the crumbs off the bread plate and into the soup we were having for dinner, where they floated like teeny-tiny, bacon-flavored dumplings.
By the end of the meal we’d eaten about one-third of the loaf. We divided what was left into two bags for the freezer, to be used with future soup suppers.
I’d do it a little differently if I did it again. For starters, I’d use half flour and half cornmeal, rather than the all-corn recipe she shared. Cornmeal-only does make the loaf free of gluten, but it also made it a bit more crumbly than I would have liked. I’d also use more olive oil and less bacon fat, to negate the need for additional sweetening.
Fact is, I will probably never make this again. It just wasn’t memorable enough. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. We never know whether a recipe will be good or meh (or awful) until we try it. I’ll never make catsup cookies again, but we always have Kool-Aid pickles in our fridge.
Readers: Are you still in the weekly beans challenge?
Related reading:
I’m going to have to scoot by on lentils again. My dental implant took place on Tuesday–but, fortunately, I got a quart of squash and red lentil soup (made last fall) out of the freezer and ate that. I hope this keeps my membership in the Legumes Club current. Next up, split pea soup!
Omigosh that sounds good! Pea soup has always been my favorite and I haven’t had it for ages. You’ve inspired me to make a batch this weekend 🙂
The two of you have me wanting split pea soup as well; for us, the secret ingredient is the sweet broth made from the pea pods. Maybe that will be next week’s offering, unless we use some of the leftover 99-cent-a-pound pork to make chile verde with black beans from the freezer and some of the green tomato salsa we put up last year.
I made lentil soup again this week so good!
We had pea soup this week. I also read the earlier Ketchup Cookies and it reminds me of one of my favorite can of soup recipes: Cheater’s Goulash. Brown hamburger (or ground turkey or meat of whatever kind you prefer) with pepper and garlic, drain fat, add one can Campbell’s Golden Mushroom soup and about a half cup sour cream. Serve over egg noodles. Actually good, relatively economical and a great go-to for nights you need an easy recipe.
We sometimes make a faux goulash with mushroom soup and our home-canned turkey, adding whey drained from my homemade yogurt and a little bit of milk, allowing each of us to add as much (or as little) sour cream as we like. Start it with slowly cooked onions, celery from our garden and some of those peppers from the ugly-but-still-good table in the produce section. (When we see those peppers, we chop and freeze them.)
Definitely faux — but definitely fast. Sometimes expediency beats authenticity.
Thanks for reading, and for leaving a comment.
I love your posts. Thanks for the honesty….because the headline had me thinking I might try it. I will make some hummus, to try to be more “beanie”, and I will skip the bread!
I made a bean soup today. Had cans of reduced for quick sale navy beans and used two. Chopped up celery/carrots and simmered in a homemade broth. Had a gallon bag of bacon ends and pieces divided and wrapped for cooking, so I used a small ball that was mostly meat. I also added a can of tomatoes diced, also reduced rack. Added some colorful peppers and onion slices diced and frozen. It turned out to be bean with vegetable bacon soup. My saving grace was that I cooked ahead the night before all the add ins and only had to simmer for dinner. We love beans and this is a fun challenge.
It all sounds delicious — and I am enjoying reading everyone’s experiences with this challenge.
We had chili made with pinto beans (left over from the bread experiment), turkey (we finally cooked the 69-cents-a-pound bird we’ve had for probably two months), a can of reduced-for-quick-sale tomatoes (49 cents), the last bit of turkey gravy, half a cup of pumpkin puree (from the freezer), a bit of hominy (DF bought a five-pound can of the stuff for $3.29 and we froze it in portions), and onions and manager’s special yellow and orange peppers. Rice on the side if you wanted it. Very, very good on a gray winter day.
I’m a big fan of lentil soup but I’ve yet to make it from scratch. I love it when it’s cold outside.
Your pinto bean bread experiment has me craving cornbread and black eye peas. Maybe I’ll make some this weekend.
Weekly beans: They’re a thing.
I have pintos (frozen from dry) and cornbread on the menu for the next week. May have some rice and /or greens with it. I also found a pound bag of pinto beans on sale for 89 cents! I have too many frozen right now but i bought to freeze in the next month or so
Beans will stay on the shelf for quite a while. When you see them on sale, grab them.
I’ve got a pound of black beans cooking in the crockpot as I write this. Once cooked and cooled, they’ll be divided into serving sized bags and frozen. These will be added to vegetable soups along with a small amount of cooked elbow macaroni. I love the taste of these two additions in a vegetable soup.
The bean (pea) dish for last week was Split Pea Soup. So good in the wintertime…or anytime, IMHO.
I’m making a batch of lentil soup (that has garbanzo beans in it) and a white bean salad for lunches this week. It’s been intensely busy at work in Jan so I let myself slip into less frugal lunch choices. Donna, have you incorporated black bean brownies into your bean consumption efforts?
I have not done black-bean brownies. My niece has, though, and her kids liked them. Might have to ask her for the recipe.
I used up the frozen baby Lima beans cooked with leftover ham and broth, from the freezer. We ate them for two nights as the vegetable with the latest ham I cooked. Latest ham bone into the freezer in a ziploc bag, with all of the air sucked out with a large straw.