More "assembly instructions" than a recipe, but there you go. Dead simple & foolproof:
Into a large (8 qt) Dutch oven/stock pot type vessel:
--- one gallon water
--- 2 lbs washed black beans
--- 2 baseball-sized onions peeled and cut into 3/4"-ish chunks
--- 1 tsp whole cumin seeds
--- 1 tsp coarse black pepper
--- a solid splash of some form of oil (required to release oil soluble flavor compounds)
--- 10 dried red Thai-style chiles (count them going in... it's important)
Thoroughly stir, bring to a boil, then reduce to a gentle boil, cover, and start testing for doneness after 2.5 to 3 hours.
Do not stir during cooking.
When beans are tender but not mushy, use tongs to remove all 10 chilies. Throw away 9 of them, and put the 10th one into an immersion-wand blender's cylinder/container thingie along with 4 tsp salt, all the onion pieces you can reasonably retrieve with a ladle, a ladle's worth of beans, and fill to near the top with cooking liquid/broth.
Blend everything until completely smooth---think of it as gravy---and pour back into the pot.
Stir thoroughly.
NOTE: one chile doesn't add heat, just a bit of dimension/character. More WILL add something that's perceived as heat, which will wreck the batch. While served with spicy-hot food, beans themselves should not be hot. Doing so is like putting cayenne pepper on peach pie or similar. Yuck.
Wait to eat until kept overnight in the fridge. Two or three days is better. The flavor will develop every day, linearly, until the beans finally go bad (I've never had a batch go uneaten long enough for that happen but it must eventually, right?).
Serve either as-is, or ladle into a non-stick skillet and smush---do not blend---to desired smoothness. Anywhere from a "rustic crush" to butter-smooth, whatever floats your boat.
True: If I was a multi-billionaire and could afford to eat the world's rarest and most expensive delicacies every day prepped by a private chef, I would still eat these beans regularly. Cost? About three bucks a pot.
PS ---El Yucateco black sauce was MADE for these beans.
Into a large (8 qt) Dutch oven/stock pot type vessel:
--- one gallon water
--- 2 lbs washed black beans
--- 2 baseball-sized onions peeled and cut into 3/4"-ish chunks
--- 1 tsp whole cumin seeds
--- 1 tsp coarse black pepper
--- a solid splash of some form of oil (required to release oil soluble flavor compounds)
--- 10 dried red Thai-style chiles (count them going in... it's important)
Thoroughly stir, bring to a boil, then reduce to a gentle boil, cover, and start testing for doneness after 2.5 to 3 hours.
Do not stir during cooking.
When beans are tender but not mushy, use tongs to remove all 10 chilies. Throw away 9 of them, and put the 10th one into an immersion-wand blender's cylinder/container thingie along with 4 tsp salt, all the onion pieces you can reasonably retrieve with a ladle, a ladle's worth of beans, and fill to near the top with cooking liquid/broth.
Blend everything until completely smooth---think of it as gravy---and pour back into the pot.
Stir thoroughly.
NOTE: one chile doesn't add heat, just a bit of dimension/character. More WILL add something that's perceived as heat, which will wreck the batch. While served with spicy-hot food, beans themselves should not be hot. Doing so is like putting cayenne pepper on peach pie or similar. Yuck.
Wait to eat until kept overnight in the fridge. Two or three days is better. The flavor will develop every day, linearly, until the beans finally go bad (I've never had a batch go uneaten long enough for that happen but it must eventually, right?).
Serve either as-is, or ladle into a non-stick skillet and smush---do not blend---to desired smoothness. Anywhere from a "rustic crush" to butter-smooth, whatever floats your boat.
True: If I was a multi-billionaire and could afford to eat the world's rarest and most expensive delicacies every day prepped by a private chef, I would still eat these beans regularly. Cost? About three bucks a pot.
PS ---El Yucateco black sauce was MADE for these beans.
