The perfect Caribbean Rice and Beans Recipe
The perfect rice and beans recipe, a staple dish in Caribbean cuisine. Rice cooked in dried beans broth with spices. This dish is best served with vegetable stews, meat stews, seafood, and poultry.
Cooking Rice and Beans requires patience and fresh ingredients. The best way to have a winning recipe is by finding the best red bean brand. Whichever brand name you choose, the cooking process will also vary.
How to choose the best-dried beans for your rice and beans recipe
Beans, in general, contain a lot of nutrients that are useful to the body. There are no simple ways to figure out what the best-dried beans are. Of course, you can rely on friends’ and family’s experiences, but finding a brand you like will take some time.
People in the Caribbean usually buy the Goya brand of beans because that’s what we are used to. We will try other brands by choice.
Beans are legumes and are a healthy diet choice.
We must make legumes part of our daily diet, which is a good choice in my opinion.
Beans contain amino acids, the protein building blocks that the body uses to heal and make new tissues, such as bone, muscle, hair, skin, and blood.
A Rice and beans recipe is a great side dish.
There are many different ways to incorporate beans into your diet. Rice and Beans dish is an excellent choice to serve with Chicken in Creole Sauce or any meat sauce. You can use either white rice or yellow rice to make this recipe.
Although the norm is to use yellow rice, good white rice will also taste great. Not every rice brand makes great dishes when mixed with other ingredients. My preferred choice is Jasmine rice. There is no need to add a lot of water. With enough water to cook the rice, you are ready to go.
You can also buy Carolina Rice or a similar type of rice. Yellow rice is also one of the best rice. Rice dishes are usually grainy when the proper water ratio is used.
You can either use red kidney beans or black beans. Whatever you choose to add, it will always be a great rice and beans recipe.
Rice and Beans: adapted and updated. Recipe from My Favorite Recipes by Marie-Denise Celestin.
Sources:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320192#the-basics
The perfect Rice and Beans
Ingredients
- 3 cups long-grain rice yellow rice preferred but not necessary
- 1/2 cup red or black kidney beans
- 1/4 cup of oil
- 4 cups cooking liquid for the beans
- 1 teaspoon vinegar
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
- 1 medium onion or 3 scallions
- 3 sprigs of thyme
- 3 whole cloves
- 1 whole habanero or scotch bonnet pepper
- Salt and pepper to taste or a cube of chicken bouillon
Instructions
- Boil beans in 6 cups of water (adding more water if necessary – cooking time will vary between 45 minutes to 1 hour depending on beans). Do not overcook the beans. Drain beans, set aside and save water for later use. Measure beans water – need 5 1/4 cups of beans water for the rice. If you don’t have enough add hot water and return the pot with the bean water to the stove and bring to a boil. Once it starts to boil turn off heat.
- In a heavy bottom pot over medium heat, add oil, crushed garlic, onion or scallions, thyme and parsley. Fry for 5 minutes while stirring (do not allow garlic to burn). Add the drained beans to the mixture, whole cloves salt and pepper to taste or chicken bouillon cube. Let fry approximately 5 to 7 minutes on low to medium heat and be careful not to crush the beans. Add beans water, vinegar (secret ingredient) and the whole pepper (do not burst or crush the pepper, leave whole).
- Cover and bring to a boil. Let boil for about 5 minutes. Remove pepper and verify the seasoning. Add the rice to the mixture and mix delicately. Let boil and wait until liquid has almost evaporated, lower heat and cover to continue cooking. Allow rice to cook approximately 30 minutes over low flame. Uncover the pot remove hot pepper and mix again very gently. Turn off heat, cover and keep warn before serving.
Notes
You can use a combination of chicken bouillon with salt and pepper or just salt and pepper. Vegetarians can also use vegetable bouillon cubes instead of chicken bouillon.
Nutrition
Please keep in mind that nutritional information is a rough estimate and can vary greatly based on the products used.
Nutrition info is automatically generated and provided as a courtesy and as an estimate only.
Corn Allergy:
Always choose ingredients without corn or corn derivatives.
Originally published November 7, 2014 – updated to include additional content.
I tried this with everything but the dried bean i used canned beans instead (what I had in my pantry) and it was delicious, I will definitely try it with dried beans next time. Thanks for the recipe.
Hello, Roxy! I am so glad that you liked the recipe. Many people don’t like to cook dried beans because the cooking time can be very long. But when you try it you will notice a huge difference. Make sure you have a heavy bottom or dutch oven pan to cook the beans – it seems to shorten cooking time. Thanks for commenting and have a great day! 🙂
I made this for dinner the only thing I didn’t have was parsley but delicous and so easy to make. Thank you for sharing. I love carribean, tropical foods they are unique in taste and presentation. 5 STARS I will keep this recipe to pass on to my girls.
I am so glad that you enjoyed my rice and beans Mrs. Butterworth Cook. And you are correct, Caribbean food is very unique. We love using fresh spices and it shows. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Much appreciate it. 🙂