This started as solely red beans and rice until I decided to include and use up a few bags of heirloom beans from the garden.  Used in this rendition of the recipe: Red Kidney, Scarlet Runner,  Little Italy, and Cave beans.

Ingredients

For Ham and Beans:

  • Meaty hambone
  • 2 cups of assorted dry beans, soaked overnight (reserve the soak water for cooking)
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 bell pepper, chopped (stem and seeds removed)
  • 1 medium leek, chopped – fine to use both white and green parts.
  • 1 stalk celery, finely chopped
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 5  cloves garlic, coarsely chopped.
  • 1 jalapeno, minced
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 cayenne pepper, added whole or 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

For Rice:

  • 1 carton of chicken broth
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups brown rice

Instructions

For Ham and Beans

Add all ingredients to large soup pot or dutch oven, including the soak water.

Add additional water as needed to cover beans with about an inch of water.

Bring to boil, then reduce heat to simmer. Cook for several hours, until beans are tender. remove hambone, pick off the meat and return meat to pot.

For Rice

Add rice and salt to instant pot. Add chicken broth to a little over the amount called for in instant pot recipes.  Use brown rice or multigrain setting.

Serving:

If there is a lot of broth, this is great as a soup. If you don’t want it “soupy”, then remove some of the broth (reserve it, it is very flavorful and will be wonderful added when cooking other dishes).

Add rice to plate, add beans, slightly stirred together.

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