Deborama’s Kitchen — Tepary beans
I was introduced to tepary beans by the Sioux Chef. A friend and I went to Owamni and I had them there. Later I had a little bowl of tepary bean chili at the market stall in Midtown Global Market of his and Dana Thompson’s nonprofit NATIFS (Native American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems.) And the second time I went to that market, I bought some dried tepary beans.
I had a lot of vegetables to use up, and just a tad more wild rice hanging around, so I was thinking of a chili-like stew, vegan, more or less “decolonized.” Yesterday I put the beans to soak and looked up cooking instructions on this very internet. I found two recipes basically: the one published by the vendor of the beans, Ramona Farms, along with a few plagiarizations of that one, and another on a food blog. The vendor’s recipe said soak overnight, and the amount of water called for (one cup for each ounce of beans, without specifying whether they meant fluid or avoirdupois) would have meant between five and eight cups of beans.
Well as it turned out they were right. In fact, if I had looked up white tepary beans instead of just tepary beans, chances are I would have discovered, as I did just now, that it’s not really necessary to soak the white ones. One recipe said to cook for 1.5 to 2 hours and don’t over cook. One said to cook for 8 hours, but that was a crockpot. I have an instant pot…