I Dare You To Eat It

Today was the day I decided to make TWENTY times Erica’s copycat recipe for Cafe Rio style black beans. Starting early, even a whole month ahead of time, is the only way I’ll be able to pull off feeding the 50 friends and family invited to Rosie’s Thursday night farewell party. I’ve tried a few versions of these wildly popular recipes and http//favfamilyrecipes.blogspot.com is my favorite. So if you need to make a boat load of beans, you might give this a try.

First, I have to introduce you to my new BFF. I believe it absolutley was Divine Intervention when about a month ago a total stranger GAVE ME this perfectly new pressure cooker. Time to confront my fears and phobias about blowing up the house and killing everyone on the block in some freak cooking accident. I carved out some time, sat myself down, and read the instruction booklet cover to cover. Here’s what I learned. A. This sucker gets really hot. B. Don’t open it when it’s really hot.

My plan was to cook 4 batches of 4 cups of dried beans at a time. This made 40 cups of freshly cooked black beans before I added all the special sauce ingredients.

I measured out the first four cups and carefully rinsed them. Then I sorted them for any duds or debris. I doubt the restaurant is this careful, but…

Then I added the washed beans, 2 quarts of water, and 1/4 cup of oil to the pressure cooker. You could also add 1 tablespoon of salt to cook with your beans. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. Everyone has a different opinion on this detail. I think I prefer cooking the beans with salt in the water but that’s jus me. It’s not a big deal either way.

Lock on the lid and let it rip. (Er, set on high heat at 15 PSI.) When the pot came up to pressure, I turned the heat down to medium and let them cook for 15 minutes. As soon as the timer went off, I turned off the heat and let the pot cool for 30 minutes.

Now, I’ve always understood that dried beans will triple in quantity when cooked but after careful measuring, my original 4 cups of dry only made just barely 10 cups of cooked. Just sayin’. Then I drained all the cooking liquid and set the beans aside while I repeated this process three more times.

Here’s what I used to this point:

Storage Ingredients

16 cups dried black beans, cooked 4 cups at a time, in a 8 quart pressure cooker

1 cup oil, added 1/4 cup in each batch to limit the amount of foaming while the beans cook.

4 tablespoons salt, added 1 tablespoon per batch, totally optional

The secret sauce was made, as I said before, mostly following Erica’s recipe, but twenty times her amounts. I did cut way back on the amount of tomato juice because because I don’t need my black beans to be so soupy. If they need to be thinned before serving, I can always add the additional 6 cups of juice later.

Sauce Fresh Ingredients

50 cloves of garlic, minced

2 1/2 cups cilantro, chopped

Sauce Storage Ingredients

3 or 4 large cans of tomato juice (46 oz. each)

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup ground cumin

1/2 cup salt

Heat tomato juice in a GIANT pot. Remember, I only used three cans instead of four. Any variety will do.

Peel and mince garlic cloves. I like to throw on a pair of rubber gloves when I’m dealing with this much garlic.

The fifty cloves measured about 2/3 to 3/4 a cup before being minced,

and about a half a cup after I ground them up in my little handy chopper.

I don’t know why this seemed so important to document and explain. I’ll move on now. Heat the oil and carefully saute garlic for only 10 to 20 seconds.

Two wimpy bunches of fresh cilantro chopped and measured out to be the 2 1/2 cups I needed. That meant I didn’t have to break into my stash of frozen!

Combine all four batches of cooked and drained beans with the sauce ingredients. Heat and serve OR chill and freeze for later use.

Mine are cooling in two huge glass bowls in the fridge and tomorrow I’ll divide them up to freeze until the night before the big party. I’ve probably made this look more difficult than it was. Black beans for 50 did take about 3 and a half hours to prepare, but that’s 3 and a half hours that I don’t have to spend come the end of June. It’s a great feeling.

And no one will ever miss the 3 cups we stole for lunch!