Red Beans & Rice 4

Bucking the growing “meatless Monday” trend, there is nothing meatless about red beans and rice; the stew pot usually holds a conflagration of pig parts. Red beans and rice should be rich, meaty, and spicy. The bean used typically is a red kidney bean, which comes in both large and smaller varieties. I prefer the smaller bean, the one that’s about the size of a pinto bean, because it gives you a better ratio of stew ingredients to bean and they tend to cook-up creamier; the larger kidney bean’s texture is grainier. The preferred Louisiana brand of red bean for the pot is Camelia; grab a bag if you see them anywhere. Some folks prefer pink beans (found all over the Caribbean and Latin America, and known in Spanish as habichuelas rosados, and some use pinto beans if that’s all they have on hand.

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