Texas Cooking Beans R Us Cooking with pinto beans, black beans, and blackeyed peas. Texas culinary reputation may be based on chili, barbecue and chicken fried steak, but the state was raised on beans. Pinto beans, butter beans and black eyed peas. There is some debate as to whether blackeyed peas are peas or beans. For this writer, they are close enough to being beans to suit me.Pinto beans kept the wolf away from a lot of Texas doors. They have always been inexpensive and nourishing. Combined with corn they form a protein that will sustain life. There is hardly any way you can cook them that they dont taste real good.My mamas pinto pot contained the beans, a little bacon or bacon grease, salt and pepper. That was it for the seasonings. Years ago, your pinto beans usually had a few rocks, stems and assorted things that you didnt want to cook mixed in with them. The way you cleaned the beans was to pour them out on the table and rake a few at a time off into the pot in your lap while discarding the rocks and other debris. One day my mama was sorting the beans with one of the cousins watching. The tike asked, Aunt Daly, why are you counting the beans? After the beans were sorted, they went into the pot to be covered with water and allowed to soak overnight. Pinto beans require several hours of cooking time. Best results come from cooking them at just over a simmer. Three or four hours will usually do it. If you need to add some water during the cooking, always try to add boiling water so the cooking process wont be interrupted.

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