Crockpot Beans

I love slow cooked beans. I usually make a batch a couple times a month. I make beans and rice, serve with Mexican food, refry them, add them to soups, and of course throw them in a leftover scramble. I buy my beans from the bulk foods section of a local store.

Soak them overnight. Just pour your dry beans in a big bowl. More than cover in water (they will soak up a lot of water, so add extra). Cover with a towel. Leave overnight. In the morning, dump in a colander and rinse.

 Above: This is the beans in the morning. As you can see, they soak up a lot of water and almost double in size.

Pour your soaked beans in your crockpot. I do this with all kinds of beans. This pot is actually a mix of pinto, black, and red beans (just cause I had about half a bag of each). Adn you are not crazy, these are different beans than the pictures above. The pictures are from 2 different batches because I couldn't get it together and take all the pictures in one batch.

Dice onion and garlic (both from Cardo's Farm Project).

This is chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. You can get them in a can in the Mexican food aisle. They are pretty spicy so I only use 1 or 2 at a time. I freeze the leftovers. Just cut off what you what to use and stick the rest back in the freezer.

Add your spices but NO SALT. Salt has to be added after they cook or else they will be tough. So no spice mixes either (cause they usually have salt). This time I added coriander, cumin, thyme, and black pepper. I usually add oregano but didn't have any at the time.

You can use just water, but I prefer broth. Use a low or no sodium broth. It's in my plans to learn how to make homemade broth. Hopefully I'll get to that soon.

Add water if needed to cover the beans. That's a ham hock at the bottom right of the picture.

Add a ham hock. A must for good beans in my opinion.

Cook em up. Low for about 6-8 hours. Now add salt.

With this batch, I made rice and beans. I forgot to take pictures. But I use white rice, top with cilantro, green onions, sour cream, tabasco, and diced sautéed ham steak (ham steaks from the deli, dice, sauté in butter). Click here to learn how to make refried beans.