Want to see how this rice and bean challenge began? Follow along below:

Thank you to everyone keeping up with this experiment. It hasn’t been the easiest endeavor but I decided to bring out the big guns and step it up for these two days. I am extremely happy with how everything turned out.

The Beans

Today I decided to get creative, I had some issues (to say the least) with bean cook time so I decided it was time to dust off the instant pot to see how it would perform.

This is one beautiful machine

Now, truth be told this was given to me by a family member and I don’t really know how to use it for much yet. I’ve cooked some really nice chicken dishes in it so far and rice but today I used to solely for black beans.

I cooked the beans on “high pressure” for 9 minutes after soaking them overnight.

The result? Amazingly cooked, moist, tasty and firm beans.

Nice!

For those of you who don’t own a pressure cooker you can still boil the beans for 1-2 hours. This is just a really nice thing to have if you don’t want to sit around that long. I’m excited to learn more about my Instant Pot, it seems like one hell of a machine.

Luck has it that amazon is selling them on sale now for anyone looking to pick one up:

Beans bathing in a pot of flavor

Inside the instant pot I added 4 times the amount of water to beans (4 to 1 ratio), garlic/onion powder and cilantro to add some flavor.

I opted to go for the quick release option for the steam but for those that naturally release the steam you can cook for less time.

Note: If you don’t soak the beans it takes longer to cook. I have not tried it but you need to cook them for about 20 minutes.

Check out this link here for an extensive overview on using the Instant Pot to cook black beans:

https://greenhealthycooking.com/instant-pot-beans/

The Rice

My biggest complaint about the rice from prior days was that it seemed a little dry. For this I tried this neat trick you can do with your rice cooker. Prior to setting the rice cooker to “cook” I added a whole tomato. Then, once the rice was done cooking and switch to “warm” I mashed it up with a spoon. Check out the process below, very cool!







I was more than pleased with how this turned out. If you like tomato give it a try. Tastes great and is super easy to do.

Once the rice and beans were both done I diced up half a sweet onion and sauteed it with cilantro. After that I reduced heat to low and combined everything, cooking for about 10 more minutes.

Delicious mix of beans and rice

(Click To Expand)

The result was an amazingly flavorful dish with the perfect amount of sweetness from the tomato and onion and with everything moist and easy to eat.

I made two days worth and stored them in bins in my fridge.

Not entirely sure if I could eat this for every meal every day but it will be something I cook frequently.

I could definitely see myself eating this for lunch every day. After this challenge is over I may try to make a week’s worth and freeze it to see how it holds up.

Really nice dish. The rice and bean challenge rolls on!

To wrap things up, I still need about 2-3 more recipes going forward. I bought some limes and I think I’ll incorporate them into the next dish.

Any suggestions? Sound off in the chat below.