I've eaten them since I was old enough for solid food, and honestly, my folks must be doing it wrong b/c I really don't care for them.  

When my dad's feeling lazy he'll just zip the top off a can and dig in like it's the most wonderful thing ever.  

His taste may be clouded by being raised in a dirt poor tobacco-farming community that survived the Great Depression on the things, or perhaps I just lack the frame of reference having come up in abundant times.

Usually we ate pintos with boiled cabbage or greens and cornbread (cast iron skillet, hell, dad found one in the woods one time, cleaned it up, and it's been his primary for about 15 yrs).

This reminds me of interesting discussions with the wife concerning "Soul Food" vs. "Tuesday Night Growing Up", but I digress.

What with all the "SHTF/TEOTWAWKI/ZOMGZ!!!!" threads and people buying pintos by the ton, I wonder if I'm a mutant, or if there's a trick I need to know.

I love black-eyed peas, black beans, and can stomach kidney beans in stand-alone chili (no beans should ever touch a hot dog IMO, it's a local thing).

Red beans and rice were like crack once I discovered it, I also enjoy refried beans and don't really know how they go from icky pintos to brown sludge of yum.

But seriously, can someone PLEASE school me on how to properly prepare this culinary delight?

Pinto connoisseurs, I require assistance!  

(I'll cook up the 3 most promising suggestions per your specs and include them in my 1st Ever Dinner Pic!)

Well , you can let them sit in water over night (assuming your talking fresh dry beans here) then change the water , cut up some salt pork , some onions , pepper,ect . boil it for a few hours and you have a hell of a soup.

or

let them sit over night in water , change the water , boil til' done , drain the water and mash them up into the refried variety.

Whatever you do, dont put them in chili

When I cook mine I include brisket trimmings, japs, onion, garlic, pepper, hell whatever is handy.  Out of the can?  I don't know try adding spices I guess.

Feed them to the dog?

Go Mexican - Borracho, or A La Charra.

Hmm, I've got a coworker who smokes meat (and yes, we give him hell every time he says those words), he'd probably let me have some scraps...

Soak them in whiskey.

Soak them in water over night then add them into a 3 bean soup.

Cook them  with a big piece of Salt Pork,,,, available at your grocer. Basically it is salty bacon.....

A La Charra

Garlic.

This, I like.  

wasnme and B_W_T are close to what I'm used to, I'll do a batch like that as a baseline.  

Corn Bread

Trade them to some dumb sucker for ramen?

In such a situation , I'de trade you for five packs of ramen for a pound of pinto beans and laugh as I gorged myself for the next three days.

For the most part myself and my family don't eat the fat.  So I cut it off and save it.  Makes great beans.  My uncle sells a seasoning for pintos.  I think I have some but have not used it.

Now I gotta make a pot of beans this week!

pintos are alright but I prefer navy beans myself. Now y'all got me hankering for some .

There are also Charra beans mixes (packaged like chili mix), and canned Charra beans, too. Most of the stores that cater to the local Hispanic population carry 'em.

Which is why I posted this, you made me curious.  

I'm at work, so this is from memory:

soak 1 lb. of dried beans overnight with the water 3 inches above the beans, and a 1/3 bottle of Tabasco sauce.

In the morning, throw in 3 chopped jalepenos, one chopped onion, and a 1/4 cup of brown sugar, salt and pepper.  You can also add some bacon or a ham hock.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer until lunch.  Serve with corn bread and iced tea.

My personal recipie:

Preparation:

1lb of pintos

Soak the beans overnight.

Drain the water the next morning and start with fresh.  This can reduce the gas/farts, but also remove some nutritional value.  BTW there is some controversy over this method about it really reducing the gas/farts, but I do it anyway.

Alternate method is to set the beans in water and boil for two minutes and then set for an hour before bringing up the heat again to cook.

Cooking:

Start the beans covered in water on a low heat while you prepare the other stuff.

1 large onion choppped
2 pickel whole jalapenos (1 if you don't like the hotness)
1-2 table spoons of worstershire
1 teaspoon of pepper
1 dash of Tabasco
 Several cupes of salt pork minus the skin (careful or too much sp and it will be too salty)

Or eight slices of thick bacon

2 teaspoons of cumin (this one is a must for the flavor)

3-4 large tomatoes (boiled for a bit in another pot to heat them up and remove the skin.  Peel the skin off after a few minutes of boiling, then remove the stem and majority of the seeds by coring it like apple)

Cook the whole combo for 5-6 hours on low heat/simmering.  You will have to add water to the pot about once an hour.  Be sure to add hot/boiling water from another pot.  In the last hour you decide how soupy you want the mixture by how much water you add.

Add salt late in the game to taste.


PS: My wife was beside herself once she saw how serious I took a pot of pintos, but I lived of them in college.


To refry:

Take skillet and add bacon grease (lots of it...well, just cook about six slices of bacon remove and break up and set aside)

Do not drain skillet.  Add some of the cooked beans and heat them up while mashing them.  Fry them some and add the cooked bacon broken up.

There you go.

crumble teh cornbread in them. add salt to taste. add cabbage and corned beef to taste. enjoy.

How do you fuck up pinto beans??

Just throw in spicy shit and you're good.  As for salt pork i say only b/c that shit falls apart and makes fat grease beans.  Us salt and ham, then spicy shit.







Also, beans in chili FTW!!!!!

2 Pinto beans per three strips of bacon and 1/4 pound of cheese.  You'll never know the pinto beans are in there.

BLASPHEMY

Two words:


Texas Pete

Excellent plan if you're looking to render the atmosphere in your house incapable of supporting life.  Dog + pinto beans = WOMD.  


Jane

Personally, I don't care for them.

OTOH, I could make a meal out of boiled cabbage, cornbread (cast iron frying pan, FTMFW!), and either corned beed and rice or pork chops.

Soak beans overnight

Add beans to crockpot the next morning with country ham slices or chunks.

Add diced garlic, dried garlic or garlic powder

Add diced onion

Add pepper

Add 4 to 6 bay leaves

Cover contents with chicken broth

Cook on low until dinner time.

tag

My 1st ex wife did just that, being the genius that she was. It was a beagle. I discovered it the next moring when I walked down the dark hallway trying not to make any noise. I kept feeling this warm, squishy stuff between my toes as I walked down the hall. When I turned the light on the was a small watery pile every square foot.  

Yeah, and I also used to put in a white onion, a red onion and a couple of yellow onions,
several cloves of garlic, cook the hell out of them and squash some of them to thicken it up

Also, after you've heated and eaten them a few times you can cook the leftovers down
(squashing most of them)until you basically have a paste, put on tortillas with hot sauce
(you can make some in the morning and then eat them as snacks later on, very filling)

Whether they're Bush's pintos out of the can or soaked overnight pintos or even cooked faster in a pressure cooker they need a spoon of chili powder, ditto cominos,
and either 1/4 can of rotel tomatoes/chiles, some chopped onion and some chopped
bell pepper. and garloc.

To avoid the chloresterol I add a tablespoon of virgin olive oil rather than salt pork or bacon. You can get 'em too hot with too much Rotel tomatoes & chilis.

I've got a pot of pintos soaking since last night, I'm going with salt pork, jalapenos, onion, salt and pepper to taste.  Simple but oh so yummy