Red Beans and Rice

I decided to make red beans and rice when I realized we had quite a few cans of kidney beans in the pantry. I turned to trusty Deborah Madison for a recipe. Of course her recipe called for dry beans with overnight soaking which wasn't necessary with canned beans, so I did my best to adapt the recipe using the canned beans. It was good news that we had the rest of the ingredients on hand (or some reasonable substitution) since our grocery store trip wasn't scheduled until the day after I made this.

I started by dicing a small onion, one garlic clove, a stalk of celery and the rest of a red bell pepper that I had used in a recipe last week. I sauteéd the vegetables in Chipotle Olive Oil. Once the veggies were soft I added some bay leaves, thyme, oregano, parsley, and some salt and pepper. I let it all cook on low for about 20 minutes and then added the beans and then cooked for another 7 minutes.

Meanwhile I cooked the rice, which turned out to be a bigger project than it should have been. I left the heat on too high and the water evaporated before the rice fully cooked, so I added some more water and turned the heat down, and then I had to do it again, and again, and again. Some to the individual rice grains had burned to the bottom of the pan, but we just scraped them off added them to the rest and called it cajun.