This is cowboy camp beans. Jack has made them at hunting camp more times than he can count. Same pot on the Coleman after The Cough. Bacon. Onion. Bay leaf. A little lager for the beans. The rest of the beer for the cook. Three hours. Do not boil the life out of them.
Jack has been making a pot like this since before The Cough. Rancho Gordo if he has them. Grocery beans if he does not. Soak the grocery beans. The fresh ones go straight in.
Ingredients
8 oz dry beans, soaked if they are old, unsoaked if they are fresh
1 small onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced or crushed
2 bay leaves
2 slices thick-cut bacon
3 cups chicken stock
4 oz lager to cook with
8 oz lager for the cook
Method
In a 2 or 3 quart saucepan, brown the bacon slow. Render the fat. Do not let it go crisp yet. Pull the bacon, cut it small, and hold it.
Onion into the fat. A little olive oil if the pan looks dry. Ten minutes, until the onion goes translucent.
Garlic and bay leaves. One minute, until you can smell them.
Deglaze with the 4 ounces of lager. Drink the other 8. That is not optional.
Beans in. Stock on. Cover the beans by at least an inch of liquid. Stock if you have it, water if you don’t.
Hard boil, uncovered, five minutes.
Then low. Lid cracked. Bare simmer. Five or ten bubbles a minute. Any harder and you split the skins.
About three hours. Add water when the beans start to show. Keep them under the liquid.
Done when they take a clean bite and still feel firm. Past that they go to mush and you have bean paste. Fine for a side. Wrong if you wanted beans.
Off the heat. Eat them as they are, or stir them into whatever tonight’s pot was going to get from a can.
No salt until the end. Taste. Add a pinch if it needs it. Give it ten minutes. Then serve.
In the apocalypse we shoot the Walkers. Then we go back to the beans.
Bougie Apocalypse
A serialized military-flavored post-apocalyptic pulp story about heirloom beans, De Buyer carbon steel, good coffee, and refusing to let the apocalypse win.
#BougieApocalypse #StayHuman #JackHarlanRecipes