Beans and rice — a staple meal that spans cultures and income levels, has been revived by people who thought beans were too difficult to make with a simple tool, the Instant Pot. Beans, especially from dry, can put off people who have precious little time to deal with them. One can go from dry bean to cooked bean in about 40 minutes with the Instant Pot. You can too with these Instant Pot drunken beans.
I like to take non-Instant Pot recipes from the times before it existed and turn them into Instant Pot meals. Sure, these recipes could be achieved in a traditional pressure cooker in some sense. But with the Instant Pot you can also saute within without having to worry about the pressure cooker blowing up. An exploding pressure cooker is one of the great fears of my childhood that leaked into my adult life. Before Instant Pot, I used the stovetop pressure cooker, but very gingerly and grudgingly. I could act like I wasn't afraid of it, but I totally was.
Today's Instant Pot transformation is drunken beans, a beer soaked bean and spice mess of flavor. Make sure to use a Mexican beer, like Tecate or Dos Equis. I tried this once with a brown ale and it was gross. Aim for a true Mexican beer.
Instant Pot Drunken Beans
Equipment
- Instant Pot
Ingredients
- 1 cup dried pinto beans soaked for 8 hours
- 2-3 cups water** ** Only if the beans are not soaked (enough to cover beans by 1")
- 1 tablespoon olive or coconut oil
- 1 cup onion diced
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 1 can Tecate (or other Mexican beer like Dos Equis)
- 2 teaspoons brown sugar
- 1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
- 2-3 teaspoons sauce from canned chipotles in adobo sauce
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Soak the beans for at least 8 hours.
- Place the olive oil in the bottom of the Instant Pot insert. Turn the IP on with the saute function. Leave the lid off.
- Once the oil is hot, less than a minute, add the onions and garlic. Stir until coated, and saute for 1-2 minutes until lightly browned.
- Turn off the saute function and add in the rest of the ingredients. Stir well. Resist the desire to add water unless using non soaked beans.
- Put the lid on and make sure it's in the sealing position. Set the Instant Pot to 22 minutes using the Manual function.
- Let it cook for 22 minutes then wait and let it the pressure naturally release. Once the pressure is released and the metal thing drops, open the lid and serve. Salt to taste.
Notes
Soaked Beans vs. Not Soaking Your Beans
It's all about preference, truly. You can absolutely not soak your beans, but you may find yourself dealing with the consequences later. You see, dried beans when soaked release sugary starches given the luxury of time. Those sugary starches leave the bean and hang out in the soaking water, and the soaking water is washed down the drain and the beans are rinsed to remove any traces. These sugary starches are the things that cause people gastrointestinal discomfort, so when they are removed, so too is the discomfort later.
If you know you'll cook beans several hours in advance, soaking them is ideal. I often soak beans the night before while I am also setting up the coffee maker for the next day. Or if you're leaving for the day and know you'll be serving beans for dinner, set them out to soak in the morning. Either scenario sets you up to have the beans soak for a relaxing eight or more hours. This will give the starches plenty of time to leave the beans and not get in your body, y'know what I mean.
Should you choose to not soak your beans, you will want to add 2 cups of water (or enough so the water is 1" above the top of the ingredients) to the recipe and set the Instant Pot to 25 minutes.
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