From: alisg@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Subject: Red Beans and Rice
Reply-To: alisg@Msu.oscs.montana.edu
Organization: Montana State University
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 01:01:40 GMT

Here's a recipe I like. In response to one questioner, I suppose you could
leave out the meat, though it would certainly be a different dish. As for
another's posting (Stephanie's?), I've always used kidney beans, though small
red beans would also work. Whatever.

RED BEANS AND RICE

1-1.5 lbs. dried kidney beans
6 slices bacon
1 lb. smoked sausage, cut into 1/2" rounds
ham bone with some meat left on it
2 c. chopped onion
1 c. chopped celery
0.5 c. chopped green pepper
1-2 cloves garlic, minced (more is also good, but don't overdo it)
0.5 tsp dried thyme
0.5 tsp. ground cumin
0.5 tsp cayenne (or more; or throw in a couple of those little red hot peppers)
1 Tb. dried basil
0.5. tsp. black pepper
1.5 Tb. Whus dis here sauce (Worcestershire)

(If you have fresh herbs, by all means use them; about three times the amount
given for dried.)

Wash the beans and soak overnight. Fry bacon 'til crisp, remove from pan. Add
ham bone and sausage to bacon grease and brown about 10 minutes. Remove to
largish crock pot. Add vegetables to skillet, and more oil if needed. Stir that
around awhile, throw in the herbs and spices, and give it a couple of whirls.
Toss all of this into the crock pot along with the drained beans and crumbled
bacon. Barely cover with water, or better yet, with beer. Leave on low all day.
The house will smell like the Second Coming when you get home. If things
haven't thickened up considerable on their own, mash a few of the beans around
to do so. Whomp up some rice and some cornbread, serve the beans over the rice, 
and put on some Hank Williams (Sr., please). You may want extra hot sauce on
the side.

This makes a lot of food, but it freezes o.k. and tastes better left over
anyway.

To go with this, you may want some

HONEST TO GOD CORNBREAD

1.5 c. cornmeal
3 Tb. flour
1 t. salt
1 t. baking soda
1.5 c. buttermilk (sweet milk in cornbread is heathen)
1 egg ("cackleberry")
bacon grease

Get yourself a 9" cast iron skillet, preferably from your mother or
grandmother. If you buy a new one, it's gonna take you awhile (20-30 years) to
break it in right. If you don't keep bacon grease around for general purposes,
fry a couple of slices of bacon, remove them, and put skillet and drippings in
a 475-degree over.

Combine the ingredients above and beat them around awhile. Pull the skillet out
of the oven when it is good and hot (the drippings will be smoking a little),
pour a little of the hot fat into the batter, and stir it around once or twice.
Pour the batter into the pan (which should still have a tablespoon or two of
drippings in it). If there isn't considerable sizzling, you didn't get the pan
hot enough and/or you didn't have enough drippings. Bake this for 20-25 minutes
or until bread is golden. If your pan is well seasoned and you had enough
drippings, the bread will not stick and will have a very brown, very crispy
crust on the bottom and sides and pillow-soft insides. Some folks would have
crumbled the bacon into the batter before cooking, and some folks put in a
little chopped onion. No one in my family ever put chopped hot peppers, but I
suppose you could.

Don't screw this up by putting sugar in it. That's a damned Yankee heresy. If
you must have it sweet, cut the bread in pie-shaped wedges, open face one of
'em, and pour molasses on it. Southern cornbread is just a hot bread, not a
cake, and it is really best with just butter on it.

This is obviously not a vegetarian recipe. You don't have to use bacon grease,
but in my experience, the bread is much more likely to stick, and the taste is
not like what I grew up on.

Also, while I generally avoid a lot of the excesses of southern cooking,
everyone in my family lived or is living well into their 70's; whether this is
in spite of their diet, or because of lifetimes of hard work, or simply because
they're all mean as hell, I don't know. In any case, live and enjoy.

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