So when the wife comes home with kidney beans, a smoked ham hock, and bacon, the message is loud and clear: MAKE RED BEANS AND RICE. This is a DEEP SOUF kind of thing that I'm pretty sure she'd never had until New Orleans. Because it's a Southern specialty, everyone and their mother-sister has a version that they claim to be superior to all others. I'm one of the few people from the South that isn't married to their brother, but I do have my own version of red beans and rice! Do not be intimidated by the list of ingredients. This is about chucking things in a pot and forgetting it for about three hours.

INTRODUCING THE INGREDIENTS:



1 lb DRIED red kidney beans
  Soak them overnight (or at least 4 hours) in water. You are doing this for a very good reason. That reason is, it reduces considerably the HORRIBLE INTESTINE CRUSHING GAS to a totally negligable occasional poot. DO NOT USE CANNED BEANS. They will not hold their shape against the abuse about to be inflicted here.
1 green bell pepper
2-3 stalks celery
1 1/2 large onions or 2 medium ones
1 head of garlic (or 1 1/2 if you're an Italian living with a Ukrainian)
5 strips of bacon
1 smoked ham hock (This may not be easily found for some of you. In a pinch, any smoked pork product will be fine.) You're looking for something that weighs about 2 pounds with a bone in, ultimately about a pound of meat
1 lb sausage product, preferably a smoked one (This SHOULD be Andouille sausage, but good luck finding that outside of Louisiana. I am using deer and jalepeno sausage because Yasha's mom's BF hunts a lot.)
8 cups of beef stock (Yes that's chicken stock in the pic, I used the right kind just photo'd the wrong one)
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp dried thyme
Creole seasoning*
1/4 c chopped parsley

************ Creole Seasoning

There are two ways to do this. Either you buy some store prepackaged seasoning that's 80% salt and then need to manually add 15 different spices to make up for the fact that the seasoning is unusable, or you can man up and make a batch of the seasoning yourself. This stuff is delicious, incredibly useful, and if you have access to bulk spices, costs about 2 dollars for enough to make about 5 pots of this and a bunch of rub for pulled pork and such. When I'm trying to be low-cal, this rubbed on a baked chicken tit is delicious.

This seasoning blend is another thing that has a million different faces. My blend is as follows, and has evolved from other versions I've seen:

2 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons garlic powder (avoid subbing with garlic salt or granulated garlic)
2 tablespoons dried oregano leaves
2 tablespoons dried sweet basil
1 tablespoon dried thyme leaves
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon white pepper
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon celery seed (don’t use celery salt)
4 tablespoons sweet paprika
1 tablespoon smoked paprika (if unavailable, just use another TBSP of sweet)

NOTICE THERE IS NO SALT IN THIS. Salt is a major limiter since it dictates at which point you can't flavor your dish more without making it a salt lick. That said, if that's too many ingredients for you, Emeril Lagasse's blend is also quite passable. I'd skip the salt, but it's a good basic blend in case you can't do this in bulk.

************ Back to the beans!

By far the most daunting part of this process is the prep, since it's a lot of stuff that needs to be chopped pretty fine. Wail on that onion, celery, pepper, and garlic! The amounts above are guidelines--the idea is that you want 2 parts onion to 1 part green onion and 1 part celery: the trinity. Also you want as much garlic as you like. I'm using about four times what any other recipe would tell you, so if you want the normal dosage, about four cloves. While you're at it, also hack up that bacon and sausage. (If the sausage is a raw kind, pan fry it first because it needs to slice and not fall apart.) When you're done, you'll be about 1/3 into Sherlock Holmes and have this:



A LESSON:



Garlic that's green inside like this is old. It's usable, but it does intensify the flavor and the gas factor. Unimportant in something like this, but for raw garlic applications like pesto, this should be avoided.

Now! To begin cooking! You want a big ass pot. With a lid. Fry up your bacon, get the fat coating the bottom of that pan! If you feel your bacon is being a bit stingy, don't be shy about adding some butter. If you were on a diet, you wouldn't be making this shit. Then add your trinity (onion, celery, pepper) and your garlic. Fry it up on medium until the onion's translucent and you're getting little bits of brown on the bottom. THIS IS FLAVOR.



Done? Now strain and RINSE your beans. Chuck them and your sausage and your ham hock in. Put in 8 cups of beef stock, and then however much water it takes to just cover everything, along with about a tablespoon of the creole seasoning. As so:



Cover on a low heat to simmer. Bugger off for an hour or so. Then, when you feel like it, check it out and pull out the hock. Cut the hock up. (Note: You could do this before, but I like to let it heat up so it literally just falls apart when it sees the knife.) Don't worry about getting every little bit of meat off the bone, and for god's sake don't throw out the skin and the enormous chunks of fat.



Throw all that crap (including the bone!) back in. Put the lid on. Bugger off for another hour or two. (seriously it won't matter much.)



When it starts to look like this, it's time to really start seasoning. Put in the thyme and bay, as well as a good tablespoon or so of the creole seasoning. DON'T PUT ANY GOD DAMN SALT IN. It's very likely the beef stock will concentrate into more than enough salt, but if you add any of your own you'll have disgusting crap at the end. Mix everything up and cover again. At this point, give it a stir every 20 min or so. If you feel it sticking to the bottom, that's fine. That always happens. Just don't let it burn while it's down there.

After about four hours, you'll have this:



This is the consistency you want from the finished product. Also, it's the point where you fine tune the seasoning. Do you want more creole seasoning? Add it! Did it need salt after all? Fine. Did it dry out more than you wanted? A little water. If you're a disgusting freak like me, you're going to add finely chopped Thai chilis. Unfortunately, if you're like me, your wife isn't as fond of spicy food so you won't, after all. Note though that this should have a slight heat to it. This is when you add the parsley, also. Whatever changes you make, mix it all up and let it grok on the stove while you make rice.

I'm not going to tell you how to make white rice. If you're doing it the way most would when eating this dish, you're going to put butter in it. Otherwise, just make some white rice. Or brown rice. Whatever. It's just a carrier for TASTY BEANS AND PORK.

Forgot to make a dish shot last night, so this is my leftovers. As per Southern tradition, a bit of parsley is there for garnish and to fool you into thinking this is somehow a balanced meal. (Note that removing the ham hock actually makes this a fairly healthy, protein-rich dish.)



Consume with Abita beer if you can. If you can't, consume with tasty Canadian beer. Look, just eat this with beer. This is beer food.

This will also give you HUGE AMOUNTS OF LEFTOVERS. That's fine! This stuff tastes even better a day or two or a week later. It lasts a long time. But between the beans starches, fats, and collagen in the bone, this stuff will be a brick the next day. No problem! Mix in some water and it's good as new. I can't speak to how it freezes, because it never gets the chance to.

So there you have it! Authentic tasty Southern food that's cheap as god damn sin. There's about 10 bucks in ingredients here, given that I had a lot of this stuff as common kitchen stock and didn't have to buy the sausage. For anyone starting from scratch, between the sausage and bacon and such, at most 20, 25. But seriously this will feed a family for a week. Try it!