RCP: Red beans and sausage - learning about spices

Balance is difficult for me to learn when it comes to spices so it's really a matter of playing with them until the mixture seems right. I put this together the other night for dinner and it seemed to work. The major constraint was the people I'm cooking for have no tolerance for capsacin (sp?)

1 cup each chopped onion, celery, bell pepper. I had some carrots leftover so I added a cup of chopped carrots too.
1 lb red kidney beans soaked overnight
About 1 1/2 quarts chicken broth
1 lb hungarian, smoked sausage (lots of garlic) - sliced ( I would have used andouille but, again, I needed non-heat sausage)
2 strips bacon (leftover somehow) - chopped
1 tbl cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1/4 tsp cardamom
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp cayenne (I had to leave this out)
2 bay leaves
2-3 sprigs thyme
2-3 sprigs oregano
Handful of black peppercorns
Salt ? - the sausage, bacon and chicken broth had enough salt so I didn't add any.


Throw out the water from the soaked beans. Make a bouquet garni out of the thyme, bay leaves and oregano. Place the beans, bouquet garni and the chicken broth in a dutch oven, bring to a boil then turn down to simmer covered for an hour.

While the beans are cooking, saute bacon until crisp in a separate pan. Remove the bacon. Saute the onions in the bacon fat (c'mon it's only two strips worth) until soft. Add the rest of the veggies. Cook until starting to soften, then add the spices, peppercorns and dried herbs. Cook until fragrant then off heat until ready to add to beans.

After an hour or so, add the veggies and simmer for another hour. Stir and check every now and then to make sure you have enough liquid. Add the sausage for the last hour (3 hours cooking total). By then the juices should have thickened to a nice sauce and the house will smell amazing. Like lots of slow cooked stuff, as good as this is , it's even better the next day.

The major constraint was the people I'm cooking for have no tolerance for capsacin (sp?)

I'd suggest ditching the wimps and finding someone to cook for who can take the heat! Leaving out that modest amount of cayenne is a shame, although the recipe overall sounds like it would be very good. In fact, I have some smoked venison sausage in the freezer that would work beautifully in the dish.

Howard,

What can I say except "great minds think alike"?

What you did is very similar to the pseudo-Cajun red bean and sausage dish that I made last week.

We both included the Cajun Trinity (bell peppers, onions, celery). We both included bacon.

We parted company, apparently, when it came to heat.

I used pork kielbasa, since I didn't have andouille to hand. I find kilebasa, especially if it contains pork, to be a reasonable substitute when real Cajun andouille isn't available. Note that andouille isn't necessarily hot in and of itself.

I dumped in a bunch of ground cayenne pepper, as I'm not heat-shy in the slightest. I find it interesting that you left out cayenne, yet you threw in a handful of peppercorns. And this was while being heat-shy?

Your seasoning was a bit more elaborate than mine was (I didn't use rosemary, basil, oregano, turmeric, or cardamom), but we were shooting for the same goal.

Regarding salt, I fully agree that the ingredients provided enough on their own, and no addition is necessary.

The next time I do kidney beans, I'll seriously consider throwing in some basil, rosemary, thyme, and/or turmeric, in addition to the usual cumin, cardamom, oregano, and bay leaves.

I advise finding guests with more heat tolerance.

Thanks,

-Paul W.

The recipe looks good, but 1 tsp of cayenne in all that is too much? You must have found your guests in Minnesota where they can find one speck of pepper in a bowl of mashed potatoes and the land where Miracle Whip is a spice. They don't know what they're missing.

Paul,
The inspiration for this dish was your throw away line about beans and sausage for dinner one night. So it's not entirely coincidence I guess.

Yeah, regarding the heat - I really like a lot of heat. Sandy and the kids, though, only a little bit. Sandy's palate is exquisitely sensitive to the stuff. The peppercorns added some flavor but heat only if you chewed one directly.

Larry and Robert,
They all like complex flavors - bland is not an option. It's just the heat overwhelms their ability to taste the other flavors. So unless I want to eat alone a lot, I guess I'll tone it down it down for now.