Marinated Mixed Beans

Oh, this looks so good.

[relaxed music]

Hello everyone!

I'm Amiel Stanek, editor-at-large at Bon Appetit,

and we are here in my home kitchen in Hudson, New York.

I'm home because of the coronavirus.

I've been here for six weeks at this point.

Like many of you, I'm, you know,

kind of working with what I got.

Today, I'm going to be making some mixed marinated beans,

it's one of my favorite recipes to make with canned beans.

Super versatile, it's super easy.

Right here I'm working with some Bush's Best black beans

and also some Bush's great northern beans.

You can do this with garbanzo beans,

with pinto beans, with black-eyed peas.

It's kind of a bean salad but it's really great

when it's spooned over fish or meat.

It's really great spooned over some greens,

kind of add a little bit of heft

to kind of like a last minute salad.

Super flexible, it's super versatile.

We're gonna have some fun.

I've got a fine mesh sieve and a bowl.

And I'm just gonna open these cans of beans

and drain them, and just give them a quick rinse

just to get kind of any starchiness off of them.

And I like to try to be

as gentle as possible with the beans.

They're gonna get mushed up just a little bit

as I kind of stir so I'm just treating them

really, really gently.

The less water you have on the beans,

the better they are at soaking up

that oily, vinegary herby marinade

that we're gonna be making.

So while our beans hang out, we're gonna mince a shallot.

If you don't have shallot lying around, you could use onion.

This is a super unfussy recipe.

And then we're gonna pour over

about three tablespoons of vinegar.

Vinegar that's a little bit on the more neutral side

is gonna work really well here.

Whatever vinegar you've got is great.

And so these are just gonna hang out in this bowl

for, you know, as long as it takes me

to do the rest of this prep work.

Now that we've got our shallots marinating,

our beans draining, we're gonna get to my favorite part

which is the herbs.

So I've got a little bit of cilantro,

a little bit of parsley, a few chives.

Really any soft herbs you want are gonna work great here.

I like a little bit of texture in there,

which is why I'm just gonna kind of cut through

to even some of the stems which have a lot of flavor,

I'm not gonna bother picking these.

And then I'm gonna add about 1/3 of a cup

of extra virgin olive oil.

And the reason that I'm adding this

is because herbs, when they interact with vinegar,

tend to oxidize so they get a little bit darker.

Now that our herbs are in oil, our shallot is marinating,

our beans are drained,

we're just gonna bring it all together.

So I'm gonna add my beans, which are looking nice and dry

at this point, into the herby olive oil mixture.

I'm gonna give that a quick toss.

So then we're gonna take our shallot mixture,

mm, smells so good.

And I'm just gonna pour that over.

And I'm also gonna add just a little pinch

of red pepper flakes.

I love Aleppo pepper flakes because they're really fruity

and kind of mild.

Freshly cracked black pepper.

Big pinch of salt.

You wanna make sure this is nice and seasoned

'cause you kinda wanna think about this

like a sauce or a condiment, it's gonna go on something else

and really flavor it.

And these are marinated mixed beans.

I actually have some really simply cooked fish

I'm gonna grab real quick.

So this is just some cod that I had in the freezer

and I just slow roasted it in the oven.

Slow roasted, it only took like 20 minutes

at 325, just salt, pepper, a little olive oil.

And I'm just gonna kind of spoon some of this over top

to kind of add a little bit of flavor

and texture and a little bit more protein.

All right.

That looks so good.

Now that lunch is ready I'm gonna go

give my friend Marty a call.

I haven't seen him in, god, almost like seven weeks?

Gonna take this opportunity to catch up over lunch.

Hi Marty!

Hi Amiel.

How you doing?

I'm doing well, how are you?

I'm good, I just made myself a little lunch.

Ooh.

That looks good.

Yeah, I just had some canned beans,

some canned black beans and some great northern beans

and I just marinated them with some herbs and shallots

and vinegar and oil and put 'em on a little bit of,

there's a little bit of cod under there.

Mm.

Slow roasted cod.

You got some lunch?

What do you got going on?

I'm having instant ramen.

Mm!

Elevated instant ramen.

How have you elevated it?

Leftover kimchi from Korean takeout the other day

and some scallions.

Oh yeah, yeah yeah yeah.

[laughing]

You know back when you and I

were a little bit more itinerant, I always used to have

at least one can of Bush's Baked Beans in my backpack.

Is that true?

I didn't know that about you.

Yeah.

Like back when we were in high school?

Yeah, like when we were always just

kinda like hitching rides places.

And if you could scrounge up a little piece of toast,

you got beans on toast!

It was a treat.

Marty, I miss sharing meals with you.

Amiel, I miss sharing meals with you too.

It's been so long.

Our first meal together will be so nice.

I know, I'm so excited for it.

But in the meantime, this, it feels really nice

to be able to virtually have lunch with you.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah.

All right, well,

Marty, I'll catch up with you later I guess.

Yeah, likewise.

All right.

Bye bye. Bye Amiel.

[smacking lips]

[relaxed music]