Cool Beans | Joe Yonan
Cool Beans
The Ultimate Guide to Cooking with the World's Most Versatile Plant-Based Protein, with 125 Recipes
By Joe Yonan
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book, with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.
Joe Yonan: Hi, I am Joe Yonan. I'm the food editor of the Washington Post and my latest cookbook is called Cool Beans.
Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book, you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend, I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. Now, on with the show. You're the food and dining editor at the Washington Post. You have multiple James Beard awards and an ICP award, and you're the best thing to come out of West Texas since Buddy Holly. So I met you last April when I was at WaPo meeting Bonnie Benwick, and we chatted briefly about this cookbook and I'm so excited to talk with you about it today on my podcast.
Joe Yonan: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Suzy Chase: So when you started writing the first drafts of this cookbook, could you see the bean trend on the horizon for 2020?
Joe Yonan: I mean, I felt something coming together, but I can't say I knew exactly and was incredibly confident that it was going to come true. I certainly have been in love with beans for so long, but I certainly felt that with the growing interest in plant-based cooking and then with the exponential growth of interest in a little appliance called the Instant Pot and then continued interest in Heirloom Beans companies like Rancho Gordo. I did start to sense that the timing might end up being really good.
Suzy Chase: I love that beans are starting to play a starring role in American dishes.
Joe Yonan: Yes. I mean, I feel like one of the reasons that maybe beans have the reputation or have had the sort of fusty reputation that they have had here has been that, in our own cooking, they've been associated a lot with the past and with maybe with the '60s and '70s and maybe the health food movement. Whereas in other countries, of course, they've been the bedrock of cuisines for centuries.
Joe Yonan: And I think we in America sometimes have historically paid more attention to the really high-end cooking from other countries. The classical cooking, the celebration cooking. And beans have for so long been really an everyday ingredient or they've been the source of sustenance for people who were trying to make ends meet, but who knew that they could depend on this incredible shelf-stable source of nutrition and they knew how to cook it in really delicious ways. And I think we've been paying more and more attention to that kind of cooking over the last few years.
Suzy Chase: You wrote in the cookbook, "My own bean journey took a turn about a decade ago." What happened then? It sounds so mysterious.
Joe Yonan: Right. A little fork in the road. It actually was very gradual. I started realizing that I was... It's like that horrible song from a couple of decades ago, I think I'm turning Japanese. I started realizing that I thought I was turning vegetarian. And it caught me off guard a little bit. I remember I was planning dinner, a dinner party over the weekend and I was trying to decide what to make and I opened up my freezer and fridge and was looking through my pantry, like you do, and I noticed that in my freezer there were all of these pounds and packages of really beautiful, humanely raised meat that I hadn't been cooking at home.
Joe Yonan: I had been waiting for the chance to make for other people because I wasn't really cooking meat at home for myself. And that's when I started realizing that I was really moving toward a plant-based diet instinctively and I was feeling better and better as I did. So I just kept moving in that direction. And beans were always part of it. I also write that I'm not sure I would have actually continued along that path if was not for discovering beautiful heirloom beans by Rancho Gordo. Really they changed the way that I thought about beans.
Suzy Chase: You touched on this a few minutes ago, but in Cool Beans you teach us home cooks how to cook beans in a slow cooker, on the stove, and in the Instant Pot. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Joe Yonan: I'm just puttering around the house. Certainly, I will just put a pot of beans on the stove or even in the oven and cook them really gently. I like to bring them to a boil for 10 or 15 minutes at the outset and then lower the heat as low as it can go and cook them really slowly. And that's beautiful. The house fills up with that beautiful smell of beans cooking and it's wonderful. I'd sometimes even cook them in this clay bean pot that a friend gave me and that's an incredible way to cook them as well.
Joe Yonan: But on any given weeknight when I really want a pot of beans pretty quickly and I should say more and more, even on the weekends, I do turn to my trusty Instant Pot. There's nothing easier than the whole set it and forget it thing. You don't have to wait and watch until it comes up to pressure and then adjust the heat, you don't have to set a timer to know when it's done and then turn the heat off or down or whatever you're doing. You just set it. And what happens is, you get these really nicely cooked beans, but I do think that the key with an Instant Pot is to cook them uncovered for maybe another 10 or 15 minutes after you cook them. It concentrates the broth. The Instant Pot, like other pressure cookers too, is so sealed up tight that there's no evaporation of liquid when the beans are cooking.
Joe Yonan: So unlike when you have it on the stove top or in the oven where it's cooking slowly, the water just stays in there. And so it can be, the broth can be a little more lackluster than when you cook it on the stove top. As Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo puts it, "It breathes life back into the beans." The instant pot proves that you don't really have to soak beans. There's reasons why you might, which I'm sure we can get into, but you really don't have to and it makes beans a product that you can, an ingredient, a fabulous ingredient that you can make any day of the week.
Suzy Chase: Speaking of broth, I always thought that you needed to throw in a ham hock or some chicken broth to make beans flavorful. So you're saying the beans make up the flavorful broth on their own?
Joe Yonan: Absolutely. You need salt, of course, like you do with any good cooking. But yeah, the beans, especially I would say, if you haven't soaked the beans, soaking, there's lots of reasons why you might want to soak, but if you soak you definitely lose some of that flavor, especially with a thinner skinned bean like a black bean. Try them side by side. Soak a pound of black beans and cook it next to a pound of black beans that you did not soak and just be prepared to marvel at the difference. One is inky black and full of flavor and one is grayish, pale lavender and not as much flavor.
Joe Yonan: Yeah, I really wanted to prove to people in this book that you don't need that ham hock. That I think that when beans are cooked from dried, especially if they're high quality beans, but even really good supermarket beans, I talk a lot about Rancho Gordo and companies like Camellia, but I also really like Goya if you're getting supermarket beans. And if you cook them from dried with salt and with kombu, which I like to use, it's a dried seaweed from Japan and it helps actually soften the beans and maybe a bay leaf, an onion and garlic and you cook them until they're really tender.
Joe Yonan: I think that that broth rivals anything that you can get from a chicken. Honestly. I mean I've cooked with chefs who might cook with this fabulously talented Mexican chef, Mexican-American chef, Christian Arabian here in DC. And the first thing that he did after he cooked this incredible pot of black beans, before he did anything else with it, was pour out two cups of the cooking water, the cooking liquid, and we sipped it like a soup. That's how delicious it was. There was nothing else in it.
Suzy Chase: So the USDA categorizes beans as a protein and a vegetable.
Joe Yonan: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: And even the folks living in the blue zones where people live the longest and eat the healthiest eat one cup of beans per person a day. Can you talk a little bit about the nutritional aspect of beans?
Joe Yonan: People know the song, right? Good for your heart.
Suzy Chase: Why don't you sing it?
Joe Yonan: I'm so sorry to inform you that I happen to be coming down with a cold so I won't be able to fulfill your-
Suzy Chase: Oh shoot.
Joe Yonan: singing request Suzy today, any other day.
Suzy Chase: Okay.
Joe Yonan: Well, they, so what I find most amazing about beans, I mean certainly the nutritional benefits include antioxidants and fiber really is the big one. But yes, they also improve our gut health. There's some school of thought that the very thing that we find difficult to digest, the oligosaccharides also is feeding our gut biome. So maybe when it comes to flatulence, we should all just give each other a break, open some windows and get used to it. The page in which I talk about this in the book, I headline, let the music play. With the idea being that it's really not that big of a deal unless you find it uncomfortable.
Joe Yonan: And I know some people certainly find it actually uncomfortable. And for those people I want, certainly want them to try to do what they can do to reduce it. But beans also, they help stabilize your blood sugar. They might lower your cholesterol. One of the most interesting things that I came across in my research for the book was that there have been studies published that meals based on beans are actually more satisfying than meals based on animal proteins, meaning that people were full longer and reported a higher sense of satiety.
Suzy Chase: I find that too, don't you?
Joe Yonan: Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Suzy Chase: And you don't feel as weighed down.
Joe Yonan: Right. They're simultaneously satisfying and, and yeah, I mean, to me they're energizing, so I always feel great when I eat them.
Suzy Chase: So I can't get into aquafaba.
Joe Yonan: Okay, want me to help you?
Suzy Chase: Yes please.
Joe Yonan: Well, I would say you should try a recipe like the chocolate mousse recipe in Cool Beans. It's really easy and shows off how easy it is to use aquafaba the way you would use egg whites. It's based on Julia child's classic chocolate mousse recipe and I wish I could tell you that I labored and tested and retested and tweaked and all of this to make it work. But the fact is it worked the first time, it's just, aquafaba was "discovered" by a, I believe it was a French vegan pastry chef who was looking for something to substitute for eggs and had canned chickpeas around, as you do and realized that the liquid and the viscosity of the liquid reminded him of egg whites. So he just thought, "Oh, I wonder if they wouldn't whip up like that." And they do. I mean you can whip them and add sugar to them and they turn silky white and glossy and they'll hold stiff peaks.
Joe Yonan: Especially if you use a little cream of tartar, which I did in the mousse recipe. It stabilizes them the same way it stabilizes egg whites. I only use it in a couple of places in the book for that recipe, and then I make a margarita. That's sort of a twist on one that Jose Andre serves at a restaurant here in DC that has what he calls salt air on top, which is this layer of salty foam that I'm sure they're putting through a nitrogen canister or CO2 canister or something to get the foam, but I do it with the aquafaba.
Suzy Chase: Yesterday I made your recipe for Texas-Style Bowl O’ Red Beans.
Joe Yonan: Excellent.
Suzy Chase: On page 112. Can you describe this?
Joe Yonan: I am a Texan and when you're a Texan, then you find yourself telling people all the time, "That's not real chili, that's not real chili." Because real Texas chili doesn't have beans. It doesn't have tomatoes. It's really just chili con carne ne, right. It's chilis with meat. Well, when you are a Texas cook, who used to be a purist but find yourself not eating meat anymore, you have to give all that up. Don't you, Suzy?
Suzy Chase: You aren't really giving anything up.
Joe Yonan: No. I guess what I'm mean is you have to give up the purism.
Suzy Chase: Yeah.
Joe Yonan: That's the only thing you're giving up is the sense that like this is the only way to cook a pot of Texas chili. But then when I was researching the book, I thought, I really love the straightforward nature of that Texas bowl of red they call it. It's just so complex in flavor, but it's so straightforward and you just treat the meat in that recipe so wonderfully that I thought, "Why don't I just all of that same technique and ingredients but use beans?" So that's what I do in this recipe. It's mostly kidney beans, red kidney beans, and a smaller amount of black beans. I like the combo together.
Joe Yonan: I don't usually cook different varieties of beans together. But this is one where I thought that it worked and you cook them for so long, either on the stove top or you can certainly do it in the pressure cooker for a much shorter period. And they just get really, really tender packed with flavor. I like to mash a little bit of them in the pot and leave some of the other ones whole. And then you've got this incredible flavor and it's all beans. And you do the same thing you would do with a purist Texas chili and serve it with those simple accompaniments on top.
Suzy Chase: So I was nervous about using dry beans and I thought it wouldn't be as creamy as canned, but oh my goodness. After five hours of simmering, I had the best pot of glorious beans. I can't wait to put it on my eggs tomorrow too.
Joe Yonan: Great.
Suzy Chase: I'm so excited. Yay. Now for my segment called my favorite cookbook. Aside from this cookbook, what is your all time favorite cookbook and why?
Joe Yonan: Wow, that is a question. All time favorite?
Suzy Chase: All time.
Joe Yonan: All time. All time. All time. There's been a lot. I've had a lot of time. Well, I'll tell you, I'm a huge fan of Amy Chaplain's work. She wrote Whole Food Cooking Every Day, and I think her recipes are stellar. And whenever I cook out of a book, I met, I know Amy, she and I are friends and I'm so jealous of, I don't know, her effortlessness in the kitchen. She's Australian and she's got that incredible palette and everything she cooks is incredibly bright, flavored and everything comes together so wonderfully and it feels so, I don't want to say healthy, it feels nourishing, which I think is a different feeling. But God, there's so many others that I feel like I could mention. I mean Madhur Jaffrey's books. I'm a big fan of Anna Jones, the British Vegetarian Cookbook author. Oh God, I'm leaving out a million, million people.
Joe Yonan: But I would say off the top of my head, if I had to pick one, even though it came out recently, it would be Whole Food Cooking Every Day.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Joe Yonan: I make it so easy for people. So everything about me is just Joe Yonan. So it's www.joeynan.com. It's Twitter handle @joeyonan. It's Instagram, Joe Yonan. It's Facebook Joe Yonan. No fancy names. Just me.
Suzy Chase: This has been so much fun. Thanks Joe, for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Joe Yonan: Thank you for having me, Suzy. I loved it.
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