Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Pintos

I soak pintos overnight and pour off the water and replace with fresh. Add cut up onion, a teaspoon or so of minced garlic, a bit of crushed red pepper flakes to taste, and the same with black pepper. Also add ham hocks or ham bone, depending on what I have got on hand. What really gives it a good flavor is to get some salted hog jowl and rinse it real good to get the salt off -important- and slice it up into about 1 inch cubes. Do not add any additional salt as there probably will be plenty from the salt jowl. Boil gently uncovered, adding water as needed until beans are soft. Taste the broth before beans are fully soft and add salt if needed. Probably not needed as even though the salt jowl was rinsed well, it will still leach out a bit of salt. My wife likes me to add a pound or so of seasoned and browned ground meat as well to it. Pretty darn good eat'n either way.

My wife on some occasions adds hunks of Kielbasi or other link sausage to the beans. Makes a good change of pace, but the standard is pinto beans, pan fried potatoes and cornbread. miles