Cookbook:Rice an' Peas

Cookbook | Ingredients | Recipes | Vegan Cuisine | Caribbean cuisines | Rice

There's lots of ways to cook rice an' peas, but this one is easy and hassle free. This is a traditional Caribbean dish, done easy in a rice cooker, great for your ital-eating Rastafarian or vegan friends.

Ingredients

• 1 cup beans (kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans) (also known as "peas"), dried or canned
• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 cup water

Procedure

1. The beans should either be pre-soaked for at least 8 hours, and, if kidney beans, boiled briskly for 20 minutes or from a can. It is important to soak and pre-cook dried kidney beans. Dried kidney beans will cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea unless they have been boiled briskly (the slow cooker will not do - it can even make things worse) for at least twenty minutes to destroy the very indigestible phytohaemagglutinin that they contain - they will then need another 60-90 minutes slow simmer to be tender. Tinned kidney beans are quite safe and do not need pre-cooking as their preparation involves sufficient heat to destroy the toxin.
2. Drain and rinse the beans (even canned beans) prior to use.
3. Add rice, beans, water, and coconut milk to the rice cooker. If using a fuzzy logic cooker, set to cook for brown rice. For an on/off cooker, turn it on.

In about 30 minutes your rice cooker will "pop". Open, stir, and serve. This serves one for each cup of rice.