Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Easy Beans

Tried a new-to-me procedure for the weekly pot of beans yesterday. I generally make these in a slow-cooker, but decided to try the pressure cooker method.

I used a 1 3/4 lb apple-smoked ham shank, a pound of dry beans (these were Anasazis but I am sure any type would work), a big chopped onion and a few cloves of garlic, a quart of chicken stock, part of a bottle of stale red wine, some salsa, a big splash of Worchestershire, hot sauce and some Tony's cajun seasoning.

Stirred it up and set the electric cooker on high pressure for one hour. This completely cooked the meat off the shank and gives the beans a nice texture. Of course this was consumed with the mandatory - required by law - corn bread.

Sounds good. Gotta have corn bread with beans!

Does sound very good. What did the wine do for it? Never tried that.

scratching my head at the wine part.

The wine richens the broth up - not a show-stopper if there isn't any handy. I am sure too much wine would NOT be a good thing, just like in any cooking. I generally like to use a bit of tomato product for acidity, the best being El Pato or Rotel.

A bit of fine tuning this recipe - my normal (slow-cooker) way of dealing with these shanks is to scrape off the smoked outer layer, as it tends to be somewhat bitter, and (sob) cut off the bigger hunks of fat. Left the skin and fat on this p-c prep. The next batch will not get as much salty seasoning. Will probably use another half pound of beans and more liquid.

Well the wine really covers a lot of different sins. It does at alot of flavor saves on salt a great deal.

A little tip for over salting anything, add a raw potato and boil, it like a sponge for salt.

I'm a big fan of pressure cookers, been using them as long back as I can remember. The big thing I have learned is the brand makes a big difference. Many years back I got tired of trying to find replacement seals. I switched over to the All American brand and have never had to look back. We have found the the 910, and the 925 really covers us just fine. I had the 915 and fond it just a might to big for a daily cooker.

All American

The last of this batch was de-salinated with Shiner Bock - it took three bottles IIRC.

My cooker is a 5-6 quart programmable Cook's Essentials rig I got on a hot-damn sale on a shopping channel. Its best tricks so far are doing a corned beef brisket and cooking a whole chicken to bits for soup.

I grew up around real pressure cookers on the family farm, and was always a bit in intimidated by them. Mom and Grandma used them a lot for sterilizing canning jars and making used-up, non-productive hens into soup - and chicken dumplings.