The first time I made red beans and rice for our then-foster son, 8 years old at the time, it was out of a sense of desperation. It was hard to get him to eat more than a few bites of anything that wasn’t pizza, but this dish (along with Frito pie) was an outright hit: I’ll never tire of eating the combination of spicy red kidney beans with fluffy white rice to soak up the creamy sauce, and as it turned out, neither would he.
I had adapted the recipe from the New Orleans restaurateurs Emily and Alon Shaya. She makes the vegetarian version they set out for friends and family every Monday (along with a meaty version and a salad), in keeping with a tradition whose roots supposedly lie in Monday being wash day. Before the advent of washing machines, the story goes, it was an all-day affair, so cooks were looking for a way to use Sunday night’s meat leftovers and let the pot bubble away on the stovetop for hours on end without much, if any, attention. Red beans qualified.
For years I have cooked the dish low and slow, employing smoked paprika and soy sauce instead of meat. In accordance with Emily Shaya’s instructions, I start with the “trinity” of onion, green pepper and celery, along with Creole seasoning, then cook the beans on low heat for four to five hours before adding more flavorings (including Tabasco) and mashing some in the pot to get that creamy, saucy texture. Before they’re done, I steam white or brown rice.
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The 8-year-old loved it so much he asked me to pack it for his weekday lunches, which I was happy to do. At the time, I was working from home, so it was easy enough to get it going midday and finish it in time for dinner, even on a weekday. Fast forward a year, and I’m back in the office most days. The 8-year-old is 9 and living with extended family, although we get to see him for regular visits, and now we have a 14-year-old who is seemingly always hungry. He loves these red beans and rice, too, but between work and shuttling him to or from basketball practice and the like, I rarely feel like I can be home long enough to slow-simmer a pot of beans.
The solution was obvious: I now make the beans exclusively in the Instant Pot, shaving hours off the process. This approach is still not lightning quick; red kidney beans take longer to get tender than many varieties. But it works beautifully, especially once I cut the amount of liquid back to account for the IP’s lack of evaporation. When I hear that telltale time-is-up beep, I manually release the steam before finishing the dish, then I spoon the saucy beans into shallow bowls and add a scoop of rice.
In a way, I’m still hewing to tradition. Because the hour or so that it takes the beans to cook is just about enough time to do a load or two of wash (in a machine, of course), even if it’s not a Monday.
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