I’ve been using Rancho Gordo dried beans for several years now and have even written about them in this very column.
Well, vindication is finally mine. The longest article in the latest issue of The New Yorker is about none other than the company Rancho Gordo and its creator, Steve Sando.
Let’s face it, when you are profiled in The New Yorker, you have officially entered sainthood.
Let’s face it 2, it’s well deserved.
This issue of the magazine is about travel and food. I highly recommend it for the Rancho Gordo article alone. If you have not been cooking with dried beans, reading this article may help push you in that direction.
Now that I have been using all sorts of Rancho Gordo beans, I have one cardinal rule: Never throw out the bean broth after cooking the beans.
I cook mine in a pressure cooker. The broth is rich and good enough to drink. Sando claims that the bean broth is even better when cooking the beans on the stovetop. I guess we’re talking about the difference between a Porsche and a Ferrari.
Just the other day I made minestrone with large sorana beans, which are a variety of cannellini bean that Sando labels Marcella beans. After Marcella Hazen. I bought about 10 pounds of them a couple of years ago and now they’re gone.
This soup, along with the two I made before it, are the best soups I have ever made. It’s the bean broth. If you start with great ingredients you can’t go wrong.
Now I have to go online as soon as possible to order some more beans. I’m sure the website is swamped.
— LOU
10 pounds of beans? That’s a lot of beans. I don’t buy 10 pounds of anything at a time. Except maybe a Thanksgiving turkey.
I like beans, but where would I keep 10 pounds of beans?
I am looking forward to fresh beans. Lima beans, shell beans or fava beans are such a different animal when freshly shelled and cooked.
But in case of some kind of catastrophic event I suppose 10 pounds of dried beans might come in handy.
—LUCY