Exploring Rancho Gordo Dried Beans

I have mentioned many times on this blog that Ann and I must be Tuscan at heart. We are without doubt mangiafagioli, bean eaters: we love beans and they are a substantial source of protein in our diet. While our everyday diet heretofore has depended largely on canned beans (because when you're busy, you don't always have time to cook dried beans), we recognize that dried beans almost always taste better and come in a lot wider variety than the five or six kinds in cans at the grocery store.

Now that I am retired and finding the time to cook dried beans is no longer an issue, I'm using a lot more dried beans. In the past, Cannellini were the beans that we used the most, followed by Black Beans and Great Northern Beans. From time to time, I cooked dried Pintos or Mayocobas, largely for frijoles refritos. For refritos, I learned that I prefered Mayocobas to Pintos, but also refry Black Beans from time to time. Frankly, any leftover pot beans are likely to become refritos at our house.

I have just recently started buying beans from Rancho Gordo in Napa, CA. Although I have known of them for a very, very long time thanks to a tip from chef Alice Waters, I never needed to order from them while I was in the restaurant business. On the East Coast, we had our own growers and small importers for wholesale quantities of beans.

Here are some notes about beans (updated with each reorder) that we have purchased from Rancho Gordo. They are mostly to refresh my feeble mind when it comes time to reorder, but they're out here for anyone looking for ideas as well.

One Haul from Rancho Gordo

Christmas Lima Beans. I've seen these beans in seed catalogs, but had never eaten them. I didn't imagine that they were significantly different from any other form of lima beans. Ann loves dried limas so I got them for her. I grew up eating the fresh form, which in the South we call butterbeans, and don't have a lot of experience cooking the dried form.

Because the beans are reputedly meaty, I treated them like meat, braising them with bacon, onions, porcini mushrooms, and Pinot Noir à la boeuf bourguignon. I feel like this dish was a miss in two ways. First, I should have reserved the expensive treatment for meat. And second, I wasn't happy with these beans. After an overnight soaking and 7-1/2 hours of braising, only 2/3 of the beans were cooked through.

Although I'm leaning towards not reordering these enormously popular beans again, my cooking method is likely at fault. I did not par-cook these large beans after soaking overnight and maybe that accounts for their less than wonderful texture.

Royal Corona Beans. Ann really likes the large white beans from Greece called, aptly enough, gigantes. Royal Coronas are supposed to be similar but larger, richer, and creamier than gigantes. What's not to love about that? I turned them into gigantes plaki, the traditional baked bean dish of Greece. They took longer to cook than I first thought, but in the end, I liked these beans a lot.

Snowcap Beans. I got these beans because I had no idea what they are like and I liked their great looks. The name snowcap is honest: they are large cannellini-sized kidney-shaped tan beans with chestnut stripes reminiscent of Borlotti or Bird Egg beans, the whole draped with a seemingly hand-painted blob of white. With these highly attractive beans, I made a bean and chicken adovada along the lines of classic New Mexican carne adovada. The verdict on the Snowcap beans is that they are large, plenty creamy, and delicious enough to want to reorder time and again.

Cassoulet Beans (Tarbais). These are the traditional French beans used for cassoulet and we used to get them in 10-kilo bags at the restaurant so I am very familiar with them. Heretofore, they have not been my favorite bean for cassoulet, however. That honor went to the Steuben Yellow Eye bean (see below).

However, I made a mind-blowing cassoulet with these Tarbais beans and they were absolutely superb, holding their shape through 8-1/2 hours of cooking (90 minutes of par-cooking and 7 hours baking in the oven). It seems to me that this batch of US-grown beans is significantly better than any of the imported beans from France. It may simply be that they are fresher beans than the imported ones that I used at the restaurant. In any case, they are a winner.

Rebosero Beans. I know nothing about these small pinkish grey Mexican beans that resemble the seeds for Kentucky Wonder pole beans that we used to plant in our garden. I was also drawn to the name of these beans which, if my limited Spanish serves me, means shawlmaker, reboso meaning "scarf."

After cooking these somewhat nondescript-looking beans in what I am calling a "Mexican cassoulet," I am in love with these beans. They cook up beautifully soft and creamy and in a perfect world in which I had unlimited amounts of these beans, would quickly become my new favorites for making frijoles refritos. They far surpass my previous favorites, Mayocobas.

Large White Lima Beans. Large limas are one of Ann's favorites and a sometime staple in our pantry. These proved to be silky and delicious in a Lima Bean and Beef Stew. I will reorder them, but to my mind, they are not a super sexy bean, rather a common workhorse bean in my culinary lexicon, and so I am more likely to order rarer beans than limas.

Yellow Eye Beans (Steuben). This was a workhorse bean at the restaurant, consistently cooking up creamy and delicious and was my go-to for cassoulet when I could not get Tarbais beans. Many people think that these are the original beans for Boston Baked Beans. I constantly reorder these beans and they end up in many dishes, including cassoulets and a Moroccan white bean stew called Loubia.

Rio Zape. This large purplish brown bean with dark stripes, splotches, and spots is also known as the Hopi String Bean. To me, it tastes like a Pinto on steroids. This is a great pot bean and that is how we eat it, soaked overnight in lightly salted water and cooked simply in the slow cooker with onion, garlic, poblano, chipotle, and Mexican oregano. The next day, they make the most excellent refried beans. Forget about Reboseros; there's a new king in town for refritos!

The last pound of Rio Zapes served us well for two dinners, the first as pot beans served with a bit of cotjia cheese and cilantro, and the second as refried beans served on tostadas and topped with Dungeness Crab salad.

Ayocote Morado. This is quite a large purplish runner bean that is somewhat similar to the Rio Zape. I used it for pot beans and then for refried beans. The beans are extremely creamy but not as flavorful as the Rio Zape beans. The skins are a bit thick as well. All in all, a tasty bean, but I prefer Rio Zapes.

Santa Maria Pinquitos. I had never heard of this small, blocky, pink bean from the Central Coast of California that reminds me more of a field pea than a bean. They make good pot beans with a broth reminiscent of Pintos. They do not get as tender and creamy as some other beans, so I am guessing that they would work really well in salads as they hold their shape. Flavor is very good. The refritos that I made from the leftovers were pretty successful; keep in mind that I like some texture in my refritos. I am not a fan of blender refritos; pintos pureed to absolutely smooth is not my jam, tasty or not.

Borlotti Stregoni. I have cooked with a lot of Borlotti and similar beans in my life (Bird Egg, Cranberry, and Dragon's Tongue all come to mind). When these Stregoni, a particular cultivar of Borlotti, arrived, I noticed that they are much bigger and darker than the Borlotti and kin beans that I have used in the past. I cooked them up in a slow cooker with garlic, bay, sage, thyme, and rosemary to use in a Christmas Eve pot of pasta e fagioli, the classic application for these beans in Tuscany. They cooked up into large, dark beans with a dark hearty broth, really too dark and too heavy for my light pasta fagioli. I liked these beans, but I will continue to use Cannellini or other light-colored and lighter-flavored beans for pasta fagioli. As Ann said, "Live and learn."

The leftover beans made a fine batch of American chili.

Moro. These small brown beans with dark streaks are really pretty and apparently somewhat obscure. They cooked up with a rich, dark broth that was delightfully flavorful and reminded me of Rio Zapes. This is a wonderful little bean that we enjoyed as a pot bean and would use again for just that. The next day's refritos were not the best we have had. I prefer several other beans for that.