Sunday Gravy with yeah right: When Life Gives you Beans and Bacon

Good morning Gen Pop!

Welcome back.

Hope everybody is staying strong and keeping healthy.

Not sure if it’s the same everywhere but my little community of El Segundo has decided to use this lock down as an opportunity to get in shape. While fantastic on the surface it’s turned into a goddamn obstacle course when I’m going to and from work. These dipshits are literally jogging in the middle of fucking Main St. The inside lanes are lost to bicycles and basically all goddamn traffic rules no longer apply. I watched this dumb motherfucking dad ride his bicycle right through a stop sign WITH HIS 3 FUCKING KIDS riding along right behind him as I was driving down a street where I had no stop sign.

I’m glad you fucking yokels are trying to do something positive but motherfucker the rules still fucking apply!

Maybe dad is getting tired of being cooped up with his ugly ass kids and is trying to remove a couple of them from the picture.

Alright. That actually makes sense then.

Sunday Gravy is going to stay “on theme” as our insane world keeps on doing whatever the fuck it’s doing. We, once again, are going to cook with what we have on hand.

While that banner photo up there may not be as sexy as some of my “food porn” photos I thought it would work in this instance.

The bag of beans and the package of bacon were some of the items we found during the first week of our current insanity.

Basic inspiration was from the bag-o-beans. I usually don’t work too much with small white beans although I’ve fucked around with Navy beans in the past. Yes, they actually are different beans.

The menu came to mind fully formed as soon as my brain paired the white beans with the package of bacon. Then throw in some onion? Maybe a mirepoix, some garlic (which I was finally able to find SHIT YES) a little stock and some spices?

See where I’m going with this?

I’m going right fucking here with this.

Damn skippy!

C’mon. Most of you know you’ve fucked around with this before. This shit was a lunch time staple in the right family as I was growing up. In fact my older brothers and I all loved this so much that we basically raced each other to the cupboard when the right parents bought some at the store.

Buncha fucking savages we were.

Actually for some stupid reason I had a craving for this a few months ago and made a can of this my dinner of choice for a Saturday night.

It’s not quite as incredible as I remembered.

We can do better than that and we can make this shit from scratch!

And that’s just what we’re going to do today.

Know what would go good with this?

How ’bout some gatdamn cornbread? Not just any cornbread, nuh-uh. How bout some jalapeno cheddar cornbread that has some of our homemade pickled jalapenos in it?

There it is. Now I think I’ve got your attention.

This one is going to be super fucking easy and I’m going to drop a shitload of photos to walk you through the process.

Every damn one of you can make this and since you just so happen to have plenty of time on your hands?

Let’s do this fucker.

Bean with Bacon Soup!

recipe greatly inspired by Simplyrecipes.com

1 pound small dry white beans, soaked overnight – navy beans or great northern beans would work too

6 slices of bacon, cut into small bits plus 2 more slices to cook later for a garnish

1 large onion diced

2 celery stalks diced

1 large carrot diced

4 cloves garlic minced (real motherfucking fresh garlic! – see!)

6 cups chicken stock, store-bought is fine

2 bay leaves

1/2 tablespoon of dried thyme

Salt and pepper to taste. It’s going to be about 2 teaspoons of salt here

3 tablespoons of tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

Get yourself ready for a cascade of photos, a cavalcade. A goddamn cornucopia!

The day prior to serving go ahead and start soaking your beans. Make sure there’s plenty of water to cover.

Here’s an interesting item: I really hadn’t bothered with pre-soaking beans at all until just a year or so ago. It doesn’t really change the cooking time or the texture all that much so why bother right?

Well, it does have another effect.

We’re all adults (HA!) here and we’re all familiar with the known side effect cooking with beans can have. Pre-soaking absolutely makes your batch-o-beans substantially less flatulent. So if that’s a concern then heed the advice. If you’re just going to cook this at home and have no issues with “letting a few fly” then you won’t need to pre-soak.

Next day your soaked beans will look thusly.

First thing we’re going to do is chop up our mirepoix, the bacon and the garlic.

Grab an onion.

Now chop that bastard up. The beans don’t take more than an hour or so and that means we need a pretty fine dice.

That will do.

Next get your celery.

Now, since celery is a bit more fibrous, we’re going to want an even smaller dice.

OK then.

Now wash and peel that carrot. Since the carrot is by far the denser of the 3 veggies that constitute a mirepoix we’re going to want to get seriously fine here.

Nicely done.

Combine the chopped veggies.

Since you’ve already got your cutting board and knife handy, go ahead and mince your fresh garlic. Place the minced garlic in a bowl for later use.

Next we’re going to chop up our first 6 slices of bacon.

You eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a quite important safety tip right there. Look at the photos of the veggies.

Chopped up on a wooden cutting board but that bacon?

Damn right. That’s a nylon board. No wooden boards for meat. It was also chopped last to avoid cross contamination.

One of the things our current virus infected situation has done, it’s made me aware as a motherfucker about food safety and the need for clean hands. I personally promise to always wash my hands for a minimum of 20+ seconds from here on out. That lesson slapped me right in the damn face from all of this.

Get out your trusty Dutch oven and get it on the stove top over a medium heat. Bacon goes in first.

Let the bacon cook for 3-4 minutes to start rendering down some of the fat, then get that mirepoix in there. Not the garlic yet, just the onion, celery and carrot. Lower the heat to low/medium-low.

We’re going to give these a pretty serious cook down. Probably 12-15 minutes. We want the veggies cooked through here.

Like this.

NOW we can add in the garlic. We want to stir the garlic in for just a minute. Remember one of my favorite mantras? Burnt garlic is bullshit.

Now grab a strainer/colander and let’s drain those beans.

Then get them in the pot too.

Get your chicken stock and measure it up.

Six cups may seem like a lot but it’s not and I’ll show you why in a moment.

Dump the stock, the salt, pepper, bay leaves and thyme into the pot next and give a good stir.

Raise the heat back up to medium/medium-high, cover the pot with a lid and bring to a simmer. When it reaches a simmer, lower the heat to LOW, get that lid slightly ajar on there and let it simmer gently. NOW set your timer for 1 hour and simmer away.

Stir every 10-15 minutes or so.

When the hour is up, add in the tomato paste and the smoked paprika.

Remember this?

That’s the last of the tomato paste. I probably cooked 3-4 times with this tube of paste. THIS is the way to go for tomato paste, just store the unused portion in your refrigerator. Much better than wasting half a damn can whenever you use tomato paste.

Cook for 3-5 minutes more.

Know what happens next?

We’re going to use our immersion blender and blend about half of the soup which will give us a creamy texture while retaining some of the whole beans. Again, if you don’t have a stick blender ladle out 2 ladles of the soup and CAREFULLY blend in a standard blender before adding the blended contents back to the pot.

Hell yes.

Keep warm and let’s cook our last 2 slices of bacon. Cook until crispy.

Remember why?

Bacon garnish!

Psst. You? Yeah you! When the bacon finishes cooking, make sure nobody is watching and go ahead and dump the bacon grease into the soup. I won’t tell. It’ll be our secret.

Get some soup into a bowl and add some of that crumbled bacon on top.

Holy shit.

I’ll get to the description narrative in a bit because we’ve got cornbread to make.

We’ve made cornbread about a dozen or so times here. In fact we made this version of cornbread before

The one difference though?

Homemade pickled jalapenos! Find out how to make them right here.

Let’s go ahead and just straight copy/paste from that chili post I linked to up there to save you the trouble of looking for the cornbread recipe

Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread!

1 cup Albers® White or Yellow Corn Meal *
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons of minced pickled jalapeno
A handful (roughly 1/4 cup) of extra sharp cheddar cheese.

*obviously the base of this recipe comes from the back of the box of Albers cornmeal.

The trick to cornbread assemblage is to mix the dry and wet ingredients separately.

Get your dry ingredients.

Thoroughly mix them together.

Lightly beat that egg and get it together with the oil and the milk.

Mince up your jalapenos like so.

Add the wet ingredients, the cheese and the jalapenos to the dry ingredients.

Stir gently just until mixed. Don’t overwork the batter. Get this into a lightly greased baking vessel.

Then into a preheated 400 degree oven for 20-25 minutes.

Get this out of the oven when it’s starting to brown. Let rest for 5-10 minutes before slicing.

Let’s see how well these 2 dishes play together.

Play together? These two fuckers are MADE for each other.

This soup is simple yet satisfying. It’s rich, creamy, subtle, smoky, comforting and downright delicious. It’s so damn easy to make too with just a handful of ingredients.

I also figured out a trick that Campbell’s uses for their version. Liquid smoke. I didn’t miss it but if you wanted to go for a full nostalgia effect here you could probably add about 1/4 teaspoon of liquid smoke but I thought this version was delicious as is.

That cornbread? Fuck yes. The cheese gives it a smoother texture with a bite of salt but those homemade pickled jalapenos just punch right through to your taste buds. That little burst of heat and acidity they bring is fucking fantastic here.

You can all make this.

Give it a try and report back.

Now back to your cells!

Just kidding folks.

Stay home. Stay safe. Be well.

See you next week.

PEACE!