Overnight Smoky Black Beans

Browsing through a new cookbook in the middle of January, one recipe immediately caught my eye. It was for smoky black beans that you prepped in the evening, tossed in the oven overnight, and removed in the morning, rewarding you with what sounded like an insanely easy, delicious savory brekky.

Well, that was the concept, anyway.

On the first try, I followed the recipe exactly. I woke up the next morning to smoky black beans, of a sort: they had burned to an inedible crisp, and a Dutch oven that needed a long soak followed by a very thorough scrubbing. (This is a great reminder to use your common sense in the kitchen: I thought the heat seemed too high for too long, and yet I followed the recipe anyway—and boy did I pay for it. But it’s also a reminder that utter disasters happen even to avid home cooks!)

On the second try, I tried a similar combination of ingredients, but tried to cook the black beans in a slow cooker. The results were not as dramatically disastrous as the first effort, but they were such a snooze to eat. The flavor was bland and the sauce was watery and thin. Plus, they took forever to cook—about 14 hours. Even if I’m cooking the black beans in a slow cooker, I do not have fourteen hours’ worth of patience.

That’s when I decided to go rogue. I wanted the consistency of baked beans served at barbecue joints here in the South: tender beans suspended in a nice, thick sauce. I wanted loud flavors: smoky, well-seasoned, and full of umami. I wanted them to be vegetarian. And I wanted them to cook overnight, so you really could wake up to the best savory brekky ever.

Third time lucky: I nailed it. The consistency is perfect, the flavors are bold, and, the beans cook while you sleep. Who can argue with a smoky baked beans recipe that cooks while you sleep?

After doing a happy dance around my kitchen, I ate these for breakfast, topped with a 6-minute egg, feta, hot sauce, a few slices of avocado, and a squeeze of lime. But these would be equally at home inside a burrito, scooped up with a tortilla, underneath some shredded chicken, on a crisp slice of toasted sourdough, or as the beans half of rice and beans. In short: you can eat these smoky black beans for every meal, and you probably should.

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Previously:
One year ago: Kale Salad with Farro, Parmesean, Pine Nuts, and Dried Fruit
Two years ago: Squash Toasts with Goat’s Cheese and Caramelized Onions

And for my Australians:
Six months ago: Ratatouille
A year and a half ago: Shakshouka

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