My favorite food is beans, but despite how much I love it, I've never actually cooked it myself. Not even once. I always either buy it outside, or am lucky enough to have someone cook it for me. But that changed today.
It's weekend and I have time, so I decided it was finally time to learn how to prepare my favorite meal myself. And since this was my very first attempt, pretty much everything you'll see in this post was a matter of trial and error. Let's just say I encountered a few challenges I hadn't anticipated.
First Things First: How Much Beans Do I Cook?
The beans I'm cooking is black eye beans. My first challenge was deciding how much to cook. I wasn't entirely sure what quantity would be enough for me, so I eventually settled on using half a pack. Simple enough, right? Well, not quite. The next question was how much water I needed.
First, as you'll probably notice from my photos, I don't have a measuring cup.
Second, even if I did, what exactly is this cup everyone keeps referring to? 😂
Are we talking about a particular size? What are its dimensions? And how would I know whether whatever cup I happened to have matched the one being used in these recipes? Maybe this is common knowledge for people who cook regularly, but for someone cooking beans for the first time, I had questions. Eventually, I decided not to complicate things too much. I'd cook half the pack and figure out the water situation as I went along.
The Soaking Situation
Another thing I learned from the tutorials was that I was supposed to soak the beans before cooking. Some recommended soaking them overnight, or for about 6-8 hours. Unfortunately, I discovered this information only about 2-3 hours before I planned to cook, so there was absolutely no way I was waiting until the next day. So I put the beans in a bowl, added water, and left them to soak for about 2–3 hours.
After soaking, I drained the water, added fresh water, and washed the beans. To be fair, I initially wondered whether washing was even necessary. The beans came in sealed packaging and looked pretty clean to me. But I figured it was better to wash them anyway.
Finally, Onto the Stove!
With the beans washed and ready, it was time for the actual cooking. I transferred them into a pot (more like pan. lol), added water, covered it with a lid, and placed it on the stove, then turned the heat up high and waited for the water to boil.
I Forgot the Salt. Again😂
At some point, shortly after putting the beans on the stove, I realized I'd completely forgotten to add salt. So I took the pot off the heat and went to get some. This isn't even the first time this happened. I fried this egg for breakfast a few days ago and didn't realize I hadn't added salt until l finished. Came out looking great, so you of course can't tell it's saltless, but it wasn't bad anyways, so...
Anyhooo, I had questions about the salt. How much salt was I supposed to add?
Remember, this was my first time cooking beans, and I was also using this particular brand of salt for the first time. I didn't have a proper measuring spoon either, so I resorted to adding a little at a time, stirring, and tasting to figure out whether I'd added enough.
But before I could even get to that, I had to figure out how to open the salt container. There was this little metal thing attached to the top of the container, and I honestly couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do with it. I eventually used a knife to lift it and get the container open. But now I'm left wondering whether I'm I supposed to put that metal piece back to close the container, or can I just close it without it?
In retrospect, I don't think I was supposed to pull the metal thingy out. I think I was just supposed to punch a hole in the space there, and pour through it. I'm still not sure if that's the right thing, but if you know how these things work, please enlighten me in the comments. Anyway, after my little battle with the salt container, I finally added some salt to the beans and returned the pot to the stove.
Things Got a Little Messy
After another few minutes, the water was boiling again. I closed the lid completely and let the beans continue boiling for several minutes. At some point, the boiling water started splattering onto the stove, leaving quite a mess. I promise you, it looks worse in the picture than it did in real life.
The other thing that worried me was the amount of steam coming out when I opened the lid. I genuinely wondered whether I was about to set off the smoke alarm and scare everyone in the apartment, but thankfully, that didn't happen.
From here, I let it cook for another 20–30 minutes or so, and eventually, it was ready. Whiles it was in the last lap, I boiled my eggs alongside so that they'd be done around the same time, and yeah, the timing was good. Only things left were heating up my congealed "Manzha" (palm oil in my language) - which is like the finishing touch if you want to enjoy beans - and adding your "Gari" (basically cassava grounded up). And this was everything together, with my serving. I'm putting the rest in the fridge to eat for lunch tomorrow.
So ideally, I'd be eating this with fried plantain, but I was tired already at this point, so I'll likely just fry the plantain tomorrow when I'm eating what's left for lunch.
Thanks for reading about my little kitchen adventure :)
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Disclaimer:
If you're someone with a very sensitive stomach, you should probably lay off of this because it's known to gas you up. Literally😂