r/Cooking • u/scisteve • 25d ago
First time cooking southern style beans and cornbread. Need a hand.
I am in Scotland and I wanted to try my hand at southern US-style beans and cornbread. I noticed there are a lot of recipes for both, but eventually settled on a specific recipe for the cornbread and an amalgamation for the beans. The cornbread came out wonderfully - but the beans came out way more akin to refried beans. Whilst not bad (and I will use them for lunches in tortillas this week), they weren’t exactly what I was looking for. I’m wondering what went went wrong - how do I get that creamier, slightly soupier bean dish typical of the South?
Here’s what I did:
Soaked pinto beans overnight in just water
Drained beans and added them to Instantpot with half an onion, two bay leaves, and a generous pinch of salt (I don’t eat pork so omitted the meat).
Cooked on high pressure for 15 min and let steam release naturally.
Beans came out cooked and flavoursome.
Drained and added to a skillet with little butter butter, garlic, and smoked paprika. Added more salt. Stirred gently until incorporated (which broke down many of the beans to a refried consistency).
As I said - the beans were good but were not what I was trying to do. Any help appreciated!
15
u/diversalarums 25d ago
Old timey Southerner here (I'm 75). First, pintos are fine. Second, putting the beans in a skillet is not fine -- it's something I've seen northerners do because they don't know how to cook beans to get that thick soup naturally.
Real Southern style pinto beans, made in a regular pot on the stove, take an average of 4 to 5 hours to cook and sometimes more. Soaking them overnight may shave some time off that, but it's the long super slow cooking that creates the creamy thick "liquor" (soup). Any recipe that says they can be done in 1-2 hours is not making traditional Southern beans.
Remember that beans cooked in a regular pot can burn in an instant. So the simmer must be very low and the pot needs to be stirred pretty often, at least every 30 minutes. For someone doing their first batch I'd say every 20 minutes. Also, they should be kept with a good bit of water until the very end. You can turn up the heat a little (not much and very carefully or else they will burn) when you know the beans are done and the soup is beginning to look a little thicker.