I love Black Beans, though they are not for everyone. They have a strong taste, they are in the top ten foods that are good for you, and easy to make. But you can replace them, or what ever you want in this meal idea, but think about using the basic idea.
I cook my chicken in the water that I boil black beans in. The reason is that it gives the chicken a nice strong taste, without using salt or other seasonings. Plus the boiling process cooks chicken in a particular way that leaves it cooked yet soft and moist. I highly recommend this to you.
Cooking the beans.
You can use canned beans to do this, but canned items often have seasonings you may not know about, or preservatives that you don’t want in your body. So I cook them from dry beans.
- soak the beans - Beans are hard, not very good to eat in that state. Black beans should be soaked overnight in water that can absorb into the beans. I first sort through the dry beans looking for things like stones, pieces of wood, things that might have fallen in during the packaging process that brought the beans to your store. I have only found such things twice, but imagine eating what you think are soft beans and crunching down on a stone. I did that once and lost a tooth. So look through the beans to make sure they clean. Next decide how many beans you want to cook. I buy one pound bags of them and pour these into a pot. The beans grow a bit, but they are quite filling so you may not need a lot each soaking. I find a pound lasts a few days past a week. Once the beans are in the pot add enough water that it is twice as high as the beans. Put a cover over the beans and walk away for about twelve hours. You can let them soak longer but they start to sprout after a while, which is a different menu.
- The next day place the beans on the stove and start to cook them. Bring the water to a low boil, then let them cook there with the top cover on the pot but tilted so the heat can get out. If you don’t do this the water will rise and spill out, making a mess of the stove. Let the heat vent. You might want to add some garlic or cilantro as the water boils to add to the taste, but the beans themselves have a strong taste. Left the beans cook about an hour, moving them around with a spoon every ten minutes or so so none cook to the bottom of the pot. After an hour fetch a few beans out and cool them down and see if they are soft enough to eat. If they are turn the water off.
- Capturing the water. You will need a strainer and a bowl large enough to capture all the water in the pot. I place to bowl on a surface, then the strainer in the bowl. Then I pour the beans into the strainer until they are all out. I lift the strainer and shake off any liquids into the bowl, then put the beans in a container to cool. Be sure not to close the container until they have cooled down or you will have a problem (the container might go bad, the heat can make the bean taste odd, things like that.) Put the beans aside. Now pour all the water in the bowl back in the pot. You will use this water to cook the chicken.
- Cooking the chicken - bring the water back up to a low boil. Then add your chicken into the water. You can have the chicken thawed or frozen, doesn’t matter. Let the chicken cook in the water at a low boil. This give the black bean water time to soak into the meat. As the chicken starts to turn white I start cutting it into smaller piece with a knife. This speeds the cooking process up and also gives you smaller sizes to eat later. Once all of the chicken is cooked you have a choice. I generally pour the water out as it is now full of chicken fat and bean water. But some people like that for cooking rice or noodles. If you want to do this place the strainer again in a bowl and pour the contents in the strainer. Shake off the liquids and put the chicken off to the side to cool. Then put the water back in the pot to cook your rice or pasta. It will have a strong taste of chicken and black beans.
The beauty of this meal is you get three things to eat using the same water, thus saving on that. You don’t need to spice anything as the black beans will give them a great taste. If you want other spices you can add them as you like, but they are not needed.
Once the rice or pasta is done, you could toss vegetables in the water for a bit to get cooked also.
Cooking with water is superior to oil in that there is no fats, the cells of the meat, rice, etc. Cook quicker in steam and water, and the food is softer and easier to chew and digest. All in all a good thing all around.