Beans and rice with bacon

The introduction

Hello everyone, I hope that you are all doing just fine!

Today I want to tell you about this another recipe of mine, which I kind of made up, because I just like making up some dishes, I guess, and, well, to tell you the truth, sometimes they come out great, sometimes not so much, however, they are still good, if you ask me. This recipe is made from beans and rice mostly, it’s like a Mexican dish, but not so Mexican either, however, I really liked it and I wanted to share it with you, too, and, besides, it’s pretty easy to prepare, I mean, the ingredients are not much and they don’t cost much either and it’s a good dish for a student, if you ask me, because of some reasons, you know.

Well, this is a dish of beans, rice and some other things, which you may or may not add to the main dish, however, I really recommend adding some other things, too, which I added to the dish.

The idea

So, I guess, you will want to know the idea of preparing this dish and how I got it. To be honest, I didn’t really plan on preparing it, I just wanted to prepare beans soup and have something with stock to eat (or drink, I guess), because it’s not that good eating everything dry and not having something with juice or something like that. It’s really necessary to have some stock from time to time. So, when I asked around, people said, that they would eat red beans soup and so that I started preparing it. It was another kind of beans, I mean, I hadn’t prepared these kinds of beans before and I thought, that they would be some kind of not-so-good beans, however, they came out pretty good and that’s why I decided to prepare another dish with them, too. Well, I first thought of preparing beans with mayonnaise, then I thought about beans with just oil and some herbs and then I had this idea of having them with rice and I started surfing the Internet to see some great dishes with beans and rice, they seemed pretty beautiful, however, I just decided to be imaginable and prepare something myself.

Ingredients:

• White rice, 1 cup
• Red beans, 200 grams
• Water
• Bacon, 50 grams (optional)
• Fresh coriander, 10 grams
• Tomato paste, 3 tablespoons
• Ketchup, 1 tablespoon
• Salt to taste
• Paprika to taste
• Ground coriander to taste
• Ground red pepper to taste

Preparation process

Well, first of all, you should prepare beans, or you should have some already cooked beans with you. I only had some uncooked beans and I had to prepare them, I mean, I was going to prepare red beans soup, of course, so that I would have read beans soup and that other dish, too. I had half a kilo of red beans and I cooked them all and then I divided them into two halves, so that I got something like 200 grams or a little bit more beans for my beans and rice dish. Well, I washed the beans and put them into a saucepan and poured some water for the beans to get covered, when the water boiled, I spilled it out and then I added some new water to the beans, this time I poured 2 and a half litres of water and put the saucepan on a high gas so that the water would boil quickly. When the water boiled, I turned the gas on low and let the soup be cooked. 

So, it was something like 3 hours or so, I guess, and that was when I tasted the beans and decided that they were cooked, however, some of them were still hard, but that was alright. You know, while being cooked, I seasoned the dish with some salt and added some spices, such as thyme and ground coriander and red pepper and black pepper and a bay leaf, too, so that the dish would become delicious. And it was pretty good. You know, it all depends on the type of those beans on how much time the dish will need to be cooked and whether the beans will remain the whole ones or split. Well, if you don’t want to cook the beans for such a long time and wait for it, or if you don’t have that much time, you can just buy prepared beans. There are these supermarkets in Tbilisi, where you can just buy beans prepared and spiced and everything and they don’t cost much, besides, you don’t really need much beans for that dish. You can buy those beans without anything else added to them in Fresco and Goodwillsupermarkets, that I know for sure, and there are beans dishes in other supermarkets, too, however, they have some other things added to them, too, such as herbs and oil or mayonnaise or onions or things like that. However, that will be good, too, if you ask me. You won’t have to spice the dish or season it with salt or something like that, because it will already have the delicious taste and all you will have to do is to cook the rice and add it to the dish with some tomato paste and bacon and ketchup if you want to.

Anyways, I didn’t have to buy some already prepared beans, because I was already preparing them and I needed to prepare them for other dish _ the bean soup dish, you know, so that I would have some red beans ready to use in my other dish, which was the beans with rice, of course. Well, I was pretty excited about my new recipe, if you want to know the truth, so that I prepared everything with my heart and stuff like that, you know. While the beans were being cooked, I just searched some recipes in the Internet to decide which one I would use, however, I didn’t really like any of them and I was too lazy to follow all those steps that they were suggesting, so that I decided to have everything added on my own. I took some white rice, it was a plain rice, which is sold in the supermarkets, nothing fancy or brown or anything. I took one cup of it, though I thought that it would be much for the beans, however, they were just perfect for the quarter of a kilo of beans, if you want to know the truth. So, I took that rice and washed it carefully and then I boiled some water in my electric kettle and poured that boiled water to the rice. I soaked the rice in that water for a couple of minutes and then I decided not to wait for them to get all soaked and stuff and put it in a saucepan and added some water to it and put it on a gas. When the water boiled, I turned the heat down and let the rice simmer like that for 20 minutes or so, until all the water was absorbed by the rice. I also tasted the rice to see whether it was cooked or not and it was pretty much cooked and it was time to prepare the dish!

So, I took 3 medium onions and chopped them in my chopper. I used them to put in an oiled frying pan and cooked them until they got all golden in colour and then I added some salt to them and paprika and thyme and ground coriander to make them more delicious. I divided them into halves and I used one half for the bean soup and the other half for the beans and rice dish. So that, I had something like 250 grams of beans taken from the beans soup and put them in a large bowl and added those chopped and cooked onions to them. Then I put the rice into an oiled frying pan and cooked it for a couple of minutes and then added that bacon all chopped and stuff and it emitted such smell that you would want to eat it at once! Then I added those beans and cooked onions to the pan. I cooked all those together and then I added some tomato paste with some ketchup and a little bit of beans’ stock to the mixture and cooked them together for a while. You know, this tomato paste and ketchup really gives the dishes a great taste and so that many people just like them in their dishes, especially the tomato paste. And then the dish has this red colour, too, which is really appetizing. It’s like, you are eating something special, something royal or whatever, at least, I have that association when I eat something made with tomato paste or tomato sauce, I must say. That is something really good and there’s also this dish, which my mother and uncle like very much and my mother often used to prepare it and they call it tomato sauce and it’s like this Italian tomato sauce, I mean, the main ingredients are tomatoes, of course, however, my mother used to add some vermicelli and eggs and herbs to the dish to make it even more delicious, I guess, and it was really good, however, I didn’t really like it then, in my childhood.

Well, after cooking for a couple of minutes, I tasted my dish and it was really good, I mean, it was like a salad and stuff like that and it had everything enough and those beans made it even more delicious and the bacon did a great job, too, providing a very good taste of something great. To tell you the truth, I didn’t plan on adding this bacon to my dish, however, I had this one left in my fridge and I thought that I could make some use of it and I think, it was a good idea to add it to the dish, so that keep that in mind if you prepare this dish and don’t skip this step of adding some bacon to your beans and rice dish! You know, bacon is a great thing and it’s like something very delicious and wherever you use it, it just makes the dish even more delicious. For example, I really like bacon in my pizza, because it gives the pizza some amazing taste and then everyone loves that pizza even more! And when you fry the bacon it has this delicious taste that you can’t resist not eating it, so that it’s good if you fry it beforehand and then use it in your dishes, if you ask me, however, it all depends on what you are about to prepare, I mean, if you are preparing this beans and rice dish, you can just do it as I did it and add the bacon to the rice and cook them together. It’s really up to you, what you decide.

Anyways, at first, I wanted my dish to be not very dry and I wanted it to be like a slow cooker dish or something like that with a little bit of stock and things like that, however, then I decided to leave it like that and be like a salad. It was pretty good that way, too. One thing that you could do now, was to buy some Lavashi (that is like crepe dough) and wrap this salad into it and put it in a frying pan or in a halogen oven and cook it a little bit and that would be just great. I have some of this salad left and I guess, I will do that and see how it will taste. I would have some spices with it, too, I guess, so that everything would be just delicious, I mean, I will add more ketchup to it and some pepper, I think, to make this wrap even more tasty and delicious. And that Lavashi wrap is just great with everything!

So, I guess, you will like my beans and rice and bacon dish when you prepare it and will be pleased and will want to prepare it from time to time! And don’t forget this Lavashi thing and wrap it and it eat like that and you won’t be disappointed!

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