I made the recipe a few weeks ago and I can't figure out why the beans won't cook even after 2-plus hours of cooking. I soaked the beans in water overnight before cooking them with the rest of the ingredients. any ideas as to why the beans wouldn't cook?
Here's the recipe I followed: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-chili-recipe
by gugatos
5 Comments
Did you cook the beans for an hour first before adding the tomatoes? Beans will take forever to cook in an acidic environment
(Going to edit to say, it drives me crazy when recipes put so many steps into a single step:
“Heat 4 tablespoons (60ml) rendered beef fat (if necessary, add vegetable oil to reach 4 tablespoons) in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed stockpot over medium heat until shimmering. Add onions and cook, stirring frequently, until softened but not browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Add garlic, fresh chiles, and oregano and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add chile purée and cook, stirring frequently and scraping bottom of pot, until chile mixture begins to fry and leaves a coating on bottom of pan, 2 to 4 minutes. Add remaining chicken stock, chopped beef, beef bones, and bay leaves. Bring to a simmer, scraping bottom of pan to loosen browned bits. Reduce heat to lowest possible setting, add beans, and cook, with cover slightly ajar, until beans are almost tender, about 1 hour. Add crushed tomatoes and cider vinegar and cook, with cover slightly ajar, until beans and beef are fully tender and broth is rich and lightly thickened, 2 to 3 1/2 hours longer, adding water if necessary to keep beans and meat mostly submerged (a little protrusion is okay).”
That should not be “Step 6”!)
What do you mean by “won’t cook?”
I’ve had this happen every time I make this recipe. After lots of failures I now cook the beans separately and only add them to the pot when they’re completely cooked.
Cook the beans separately and then add the tomatoes, yeah
With all due respect to Kenji, I don’t think that the bean part of the recipe makes sense at all.
It is so risky to add soaked beans directly to any sort of a soup to cook there. Sometimes they’ll cook in an hour, sometimes they’ll take two or three hours, and sometimes you can cook them 5 hours and they still won’t get fully tender. This is more likely if you’ve got hard water or older beans.
So my preference would be to cook the beans separately until close to the end. I honestly don’t understand why he doesn’t specify this, since all of the work he has you do with the meat and chilis takes a lot of time, and it would be no effort at all to have the beans simmering while you get all that done. Alternatively, you can do them in an Instant Pot while you get the rest of everything going, or on another day, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to have perfectly tender beans in less than an hour even if you don’t soak them.
I would not add the beans to the chili until I’m sure that they are fully cooked and very tender. If I were trying to follow Kenji’s recipe as closely as possible, I’d probably taste them after the 1 hour and be prepared to cook them up to 2 hours more before adding the tomatoes. But it would be much simpler to just cook them separately until they are done, then add them with the tomatoes. You’ll lose out on a little bit of flavor absorption, but they’ll still have plenty of chances to absorb flavors before the chili finishes, and besides, all that flavor is still in every bite, so it doesn’t really matter all that much if they have not absorbed as much flavor as they possibly can.