BLOGWAR!!!
June 9th, 2011Them’s Fightin’ Words!
A certain blogress grand diva has impugned my culinary skills by pointing out that my recipe for BBQ beans starts with canned beans and ketchup! Oh, the treachery! She says her beans have to be cooked from scratch!
You know, there are some things you shouldn’t try to cook from scratch. Try making Rice Krispies Treats from scratch some day. Not going to happen. I make my own guitars, amps, bullets, beer…but dang, I’m not going to make my own ketchup or grow beans again. The climate down here kills everything. I couldn’t grow tomatoes if I wanted to.
I respect the whole SHTF movement, but you pretty much have to take over a county if you really want to be self-sufficient. Even in the old days, people bought things like sugar, coffee, and flour.
Anyway, I will defend my beans to the death. They are totally righteous.
June 9th, 2011 at 8:33 PM
By God, defend your beans with vigor!
I use canned beans for all kinds of recipes that call for beans.
If the proverbial SHTF ever happens and I survive, I will go to the trouble of cooking up dried beans.
Until that point I just don’t have the time to suffer semantics.
June 10th, 2011 at 1:58 AM
Yeah, I’m with Milo.
My was an amazing cook and she always used beans in a can. Honestly I live in the South, and I don’t know of anyone who uses dried beans in baked beans. Really the only person I’ve heard of that does that is Martha Stewart and an awful lot of her recipes leave a whole lot to be desired.
June 11th, 2011 at 1:31 AM
Cases of canned beans have a shelf life measured in decades.
Fifty lb. bags of dried pinto beans have a shelf life of about a year, and maybe twice that if stored, sealed, with a dessicant such as silica gel.
I’ll grant that properly soaked, (triple soaked and drained) dried beans can make a helluva good base for things to follow. But, with canned beans, I’ll have dinner on the table a good 36 hours before the dried beans go through the cycle.
And in the end, it’s what hits the palate that counts the most. I start my beans with Bush’s Pinto Beans (canned), and have utterly fooled many a foodie to swear that there was no way those beans came from a can.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
June 11th, 2011 at 5:56 AM
Nothing wrong with canned beans.
On the other hand, I make my Rice Krispies treats from scratch… beginning with the Rice Krispies, which I fluff in a pressure cooker and toast in a 450 degree oven. I find that Basmati rice works best. Also, I make my own marshmallow from corn syrup, guar gum, and duck schmaltz. Best Rice Krispies treats evah.
June 11th, 2011 at 10:10 AM
Ellison, Ellison, Ellison. If they’re Rice Krispies when you buy them, they’re not scratch. Scratch means buying rice and turning it into Krispies on your own.
June 11th, 2011 at 10:11 AM
Great point by Jim. I have dried beans which I have to rotate out. Cans might be a better way.
June 11th, 2011 at 10:24 AM
Man, I totally misunderstood Ellison’s comment. In my defense I have to say that I wrote my own comment before finishing my coffee.