What's up dudes?
I'm Hilah.
Welcome to Hilah Cooking.
Today I'm going to show you how to make some red beans and rice
because Mardi Gras is coming up and it's a New Orleans classic and I didn't
get to eat any while I was in New Orleans.
So whiney.
But it's real easy so let's just do it.
Okay, so obviously we're going to need some red beans.
That's why it's called red beans and rice.
I've got some kidney beans that I soaked overnight in a, well it was more like 24 hours
because I'm kind of lazy, perhaps, or forgetful.
And so anyway, yeah, those are soaked.
You don't have to do that but that makes them cook a
little bit faster so for impatient people it's kind of good.
A little time saver.
And then I've got some celery, onion and bay leaves that are super finely
minced up.
That's kind of one of the tricks to this is you want to make
sure all your vegetables are cut up really small because you want them to
sort of disintegrate in to the bean broth by the end of it.
And then we can add water.
And traditionally this was made like on a Monday with the
Sunday's, Sunday ham roast left over bones and stuff.
But I don't have ham hocks laying around so I'm just going to make
this vegetarian and then we'll add some sausage at the end.
So it's good a good way to do it so then you can, if you have vegetarians over for
whatever reason you can please everyone.
Okay, so we're just going to bring this to a boil and then turn it down and
let it simmer for about an hour.
All right so it's been actually about an hour and 30 minutes but red beans and rice
don't care.
So what I'm going to do is make sure, this is how you know when
they're done enough, is you pick up a little spoonful of bean and you mash
it with your finger.
And if it mashes then you're good.
So I'm going to add my bell peppers and garlic and parsley and my thyme.
Looks like I'm all out of thyme.
Get it?
Okay.
And my salt.
I'm also out of salt apparently.
Give that a little stir.
And then this is the important part of red beans and rice you want to use
your spoon to kind of mash some up.
And that's going to make a really creamy sauce.
It's going to be really delicious over the rice so just the back of
the spoon.
Kind of mash them up against the side of the pot.
Maybe mash a quarter of the beans approximately.
Since my additional vegetables lowered the temp a little bit I'm going to
turn the heat up just a little just to get it back to a good simmer.
Okay, and then we're just going to let it simmer
for another 30 minutes or so with the lid off.
So it will make a nice thick red beans for our rice.
Okay so my beans are nice and thick now.
I'm going to add just a little bit of smoked paprika that kind of like hints
at that ham hock flavor.
Which is a great trick if you are trying to do something
like this but keep it vegetarian.
Some paprika's a great way to add the smoky flavor without
adding heat like with chipotle's or something.
So this looks good.
I'm going to turn that off.
Okay, so I've got my buttered rice here.
And I'm using brown rice but white rice is probably more traditional but I like
the nuttiness of brown rice.
So let's see if this works.
I'm going to pack it in to a little ramekin and
then.
Oh, it totally worked.
Yay, look a little cute rice mound.
Okay, cool.
Then I've got some sausage that I fried up earlier.
You probably would normally use Andouille or something
but I just have a smoked jalapeno sausage because it's spicy.
And let's get five little sausage nuggets.
Come on sausage nugget.
And then I've got my beans.
They smell really awesome and I tasted it for salt.
That's a good trick to know too, to taste the beans.
Like when you're cooking a pot of beans to make sure they have
enough salt in them, taste the bean liquid and not an actual bean.
That'll give you a better idea if you need to add more salt or not.
Yummy!
Okay, whoa dudes.
This is real hot!
Dudes that is some down home cooking.
Also you should put Tabasco on it or something like that but I'm
going to just keep eating it like this.
Or crystal sauce that would probably be even more New Orleans.
Again well there you go.
There's how to make red beans and rice with an
additional fried sausage topping.
And I hope you try it and happy Mardi Gras.
If you have any questions about the recipe or anything make sure to
leave them in the comments somewhere and I'll try to get to them on my new
Saturday video Q and A thing that I'm doing now because I'm crazy.
But thanks for watching and I'll see you guys
later.
Happy Mardi Gras!