Background: Most of my adult life, I was a financially insecure student. With the exception of a break between 2002 and 2006, I was in college for most of the two decades between 1995 and 2015. To put it in the most understated way possible, let’s just say I didn’t live on rice and beans in college. That would have been financially prudent, but I was not financially prudent. When I finally graduated the last time, the sticker shock on my education finally hit me. It was more than a mortgage. It was then, as I stared down a lifetime of paying off my loans, that I learned to love rice and beans. Black beans aren’t my favorite beans to eat plain over rice, but I love to use them as an ingredient in a salad or rice-based bowl meal. Here are the moves. I hope you are doing these moves by choice and not financial necessity:

1. Get a pressure cooker.
2. Get a bag of dried black beans.
3. Cover the black beans with water and let sit for a bit while you do other things in the kitchen. You don’t have to do this overnight. An hour is fine.
4. Dump the water in the compost pile, rinse the beans and turn them over with your hands to look for foreign materials.
5. Cover with vegetable stock and add any herbs and aromatics you want.
6. Cook on your pressure cooker’s “beans & chili” setting.
7. Let the pressure release naturally.
8. Salt the beans and the potlikker to taste.
9. Transfer the beans into freezer-safe containers and freeze. (I usually keep a serving in the fridge, too.)

Why It Works

1. Electric pressure cookers are really indispensable for the busy cook. For things like beans, you can set them in the morning to start cooking as you make your way home so you have hot beans when you arrive.
2. Any dried black beans will work, but if you are feeling fancy, search out a heirloom variety or go with the Midnight Black Bean from Rancho Gordo.
3. You don’t have to soak beans for the pressure cooker, especially black beans. This is more of a rinse and an insurance policy to make sure they soften up a little.
4. I don’t know why you are encouraged by all bags of beans to look for foreign contaminants. Don’t beans grow in sealed pods and not in the ground like potatoes?
5. You know, the vegetable stock you made here.
6. If it doesn’t have a beans and/or chili setting, take it to Goodwill and get a new pressure cooker (perhaps also at Goodwill).
7. Or don’t, if you are in a hurry. Just let that steam valve rip. But know that you are gambling here. If the beans aren’t all the way cooked, you’ve just wasted all that carryover cooking time and energy.
8. I don’t salt the beans before I cook them (except for whatever is in the stock, which should be minimal because it’s stock and not broth) because a very smart graduate student in the cohort behnd me told me that cooking them in salty water cold lead to beans that were less soft and creamy. He was so smart, in fact, that he actually did live on rice and beans throughout graduate school. So I took his word for it. I don’t care if it’s true or not. That’s why I don’t salt my beans until after I cook them.
9. I use round plastic reused restaurant take-out containers.

Mods:

1. Go ahead and salt the beans before you cook them. See what happens.
2. Add an onion to the beans before you cook.
3. Add a bay leaf or 5.
4. Use chicken stock or beef stock. I keep them vegan, just in case, but you aren’t me and these are mods.
5. Throw some ham in there.
6. Throw some pork fat in there.
7. A slice of bacon? Why not?

Background: I used to love to spend hours in the kitchen cooking things in the best possible way. I still love spending hours in the kitchen. I just don’t have hours to spend anymore. Some nights I have minutes. I wouldn’t describe what I do as cooking, exactly. That’s why I call these moves and not recipes. Take J. Kenji López-Alt’s “The Best Crispy Roast Potatoes Ever Recipe” as the counter example to what I do here. That’s not just cooking, that’s testing and cooking. It’s not just a recipe. It’s a textbook. I don’t have time to read the treatise on how corn starch makes everything crispier. That’s not a dig. I would love nothing more than to sit down and pour over The Food Lab. But I have to get dinner on the table and then do lunches. (I don’t even have time to be writing all this. Someone is getting cheese and crackers for lunch tomorrow.) Anyway, I don’t have the 100 minutes to make “The Best Crispy Roast Potatoes Ever.” On a good night, I have time to make potatoes that my kids will eat that come from actual potatoes and not a plastic bag. Here’s my current move.

1. Get some cheap Russet baker potatoes like we all used to eat in the ’80s before everyone went nuts for Yukon Gold and baby red potatoes. Start your potatoes before anything else in the meal.
2. Put them in a microwave-safe bowl with a little water in the bottom and poke with a chef’s fork.
3. Cook for 6 minutes.
4. Turn them after six minutes to check how done they are.
5. Cook for 6 minutes.
6. Turn them after six minutes to check how done they are.
7. Cook for 6 minutes.
8. They should be done now.
9. If everyone is screaming about dinner and you are serving something that would work with baked potatoes, just stop here. If everyone is otherwise occupied, gauge how much screen time everyone has had and whether you can squeeze in another 20 minutes in the kitchen.
10. If you choose to press on, line a sheet try or air fryer tray with foil.
11. Cut the potatoes in half and then cube them.
12. Put them on the foil, skin side down, drizzle oil on the potatoes, and sprinkle liberally with salt. You can separate them to the extent you want to and have time to. More separation means more browning.
13. Toss them around a lot to rough up the surface of the potato a little and to evenly distribute the oil and salt.
14. Put them in the air fryer or broiler until they are perfectly golden brown, which for me took 38 minutes, start to finish. Compare that with Kenji’s 100-minute potatoes.

Why It Works

1. Despite the fact that the monoculture in which they are grown in the northwest United States can be distinctly seen from space, Russet are ok and work well for this. Obviously, they are the cheaper potatoes.
2. You are basically going to steam them. The fork poke keeps them from exploding (is a thing I was told as a child).
3. I cook for 6 minutes because that’s the highest number button I can push to make my microwave start instantly.
4. This also helps them cook evenly. Use your chef’s fork again to rotate them 180 degrees so the bottom is the top, but also change their position in the bowl. If they are in the middle, move them to the outside, etc.
5. Use these six minute intervals to make something else to go with the potatoes.
6. Same as before, you are moving, rotating and gently poking with your fingers or chef’s fork.
7. It took me three intervals of 6 minutes to get them done.
8. I want them cooked enough to serve, as is, with just some salt and butter at this point.
9. Slice them once lengthwise halfway through and push them open like they do in commercials or at mid-grade chain steak places. Let everyone top them with whatever they want.
10. I do mine right on the air fryer tray, rotating in batches. Some of us like to eat our food hot. Others do not.
11. The good part about this method is that, because they are already cooked, the potatoes will stick to your knife and each other as you cut them.
12. The fact that they kind of stick together means you can easily control how they go on the pan. You want them mostly skin-side down for maximum flesh surface area.
13. Roughing up the surface area will help with browning, I’m told. I guess it does. Some of the skins come off a little in this step. I’m ok with that. Remember when serving loaded potato skins became a thing?
14. Perfectly golden brown is subjective. Perfection isn’t possible, although you might achieve golden brown, or at least a shade that your kids will eat. Consider this success. (Love you, Kenji, if you are reading this. I know you are not reading this.)

Mods:

1. Obviously if you don’t have an air fryer, a broiler will work.
2. You can also do this move while you are barbecuing. Put the potatoes wrapped in foil in the coal bed instead of the microwave, but then follow the rest of the steps.
3. You could do a hybrid version of this if you don’t want to serve in separate cubes. You could, for example, cut them into wedges and brown and serve that way.

Background: A chef I used to work with showed me this back in the ’90s. It’s a very ’90s move. He didn’t use ketchup packets. That’s my own twist. I never buy ketchup but we always have a surplus of ketchup packets because everyone loves French fries. I don’t love chipotles in adobo sauce. I don’t love American ketchup. But I do love figuring out what to do with a surplus of something.

1. Keep a can of chipotles in adobo sauce in your pantry.
2. Collect ketchup packets from restaurants when you get fries togo.
3. When you have enough ketchup packets, open the can of adobo sauce and select the number of chipotles you would like to use. (See number 5 under Why it Works.)
4. Save the rest of the chipotles in adobo sauce in the freezer for another batch or another move.
5. Add the chipotles and the ketchup to a blender or food processor and blend.
6. Store some in the freezer and the rest in the fridge.

Why It Works.

1. This ingredient has several uses.
2. Even if you don’t like ketchup, it’s good to have a surplus in case you serve hot dogs to kids or something.
3. This is going to be determined by trial-and-error, heat tolerance, and preference. If this is the first time you are making this, taste a chipotle and guess.
4. Keep them in the sauce. It will prevent them from getting freezer burnt.
5. There’s a minimum amount of chipotle ketchup that you can make with this method, and that is determined by how much product your blender or food processor needs to do it’s job. If you don’t have enough ketchup and chipotles, you can hand-chop the chipotles and stir them into the ketchup.
6. This is the basis for several other sauces so, even if you don’t like it, you might like what it can do when added to other things.

Mods:

1. Add some squeezes of lime to cut the sweetness of the ketchup.
2. Add black pepper to interrupt the cloying texture of ketchup.
3. Add some Worcestershire sauce to nudge the flavor profile away from modern ketchup and toward more historical versions.
4. Add fish sauce to nudge American ketchup toward its origins as a Chinese sauce made from fermented fish, which is arguably the ur-condiment.

Background: From late fall to early spring, one of my favorite things to do is forage for wild onions. It’s hard to know what species they are. According to Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, “There are 14 species and several varieties of wild onions in Texas. Some of the plants we call wild onions are actually wild garlic, but it’s pretty difficult to discern between them.” It might be easier to identify the ones I forage if I could catch them flowering, but they are everywhere one day, then they are gone until the following fall. Anyway, I think they are Allium canadense, which is commonly called “meadow garlic, wild garlic, or wild onion.” Round here, there’s a creek called Onion Creek, so I’m going to call them wild onions. Think of them as a combination of fresh chives, green onions, a tiny white bulb onion, and garlic, I guess. Wild onions grow in much of the U.S. so you can maybe try this move, too.

1. Make yourself a digging stick. It should have a flat end like a giant standard screwdriver and another end with a handle where you’ve peeled the bark and chamfered the end.
2. Get a bag, basket, or something else to put your onions in.
3. Go to where the wild onions grow.
4. When you find a clump of onions, insert your digging stick at a 45-degree angle and push down until you can feel the tiny roots breaking. Push down on your stick, pushing the onions up roots and all.
5. Knock the dirt off them by gently tapping a bunch on a tree or log.
6. Take them home and store them for cleaning or clean them right away and jump to step 11.
7. To store in the fridge until cleaning, wet a paper towel and wrap around the white parts (roots and all) of the bunch of onions. Put about a half inch of water in the bottom of a double walled insulated drink tumbler and put the tumbler in the fridge.
8. When it’s time to clean, separate them one by one and pinch the papery husk and root off between your thumb and pointer finger. Run your hand down the onion, pulling off any blades that look bruised or crushed and cleaning more dirt off.
9. Rinse the whole bunch, shake all excess water off, and wrap again in a dry paper towel.
10. Change the water in the tumbler and return the onions to it, and it to the fridge.
11. To process them further, cut off the white parts, including the bulb and store separately. Return the green parts to the tumbler and fridge.
12. Preserve the green parts by drying them on a rack over a sheet tray in a 250-degree oven.

Why It Works:

1. A digging stick should made from a green piece of hardwood with a length that’s about from your elbow to the end of your hand and about the thickness of shovel handle. It will also work as a throwing stick.
2. Anything will do but rectangular baskets with a loose-ish weave will allow them to lay flat and some of the dirt to be sifted out as you go.
3. Figuring this out is pretty much the whole move.
4. If the onions won’t let go, grab them at their base, as far down as you can, and gently wiggle them back and forth.
5. Don’t worry about dirt too much.
6. You don’t have to clean them right away.
7. They will keep like this for at least a week.
8. Use your thumbnail to pop the root out.
9. The dry paper towel will soak up the extra water coming off the onions after the rinse and release it back to them in the fridge as they need it.
10. The water in the bottom seems to keep them alive-ish for a while.
11. The green and white parts can have different applications. I like to cook with the white parts and dry and cut or crumble the green parts like dried chives.
12. Drying changes the flavor, and I like both the raw and dried flavor. So I always keep some of each.

Mods:

1. Chop the fine green parts and mix into sour cream. This will preserve them and it’s a great first step toward ranch dressing or a wild onion dip.
2. Chop the white parts and sauté in butter. Pour the butter in a glass storage container and use as a finishing butter.
3. Pickle the white parts in a salt and vinegar brine.

Background: Sometimes people give me farm fresh eggs when I already have eggs in the fridge. Sometimes eggs go on sale. I love this because eggs are awesome. Can you have too many eggs? Probably. But a small surplussss of eggs is a good thing. It’s time to hard boil some eggs.

1. Get a surplus of eggs. Look at the dates on cartons or ask the person who gave or sold them to you about how fresh they are. Use the oldest ones for hard boiled eggs.
2. Put as many eggs as you can/want in 1 layer on the bottom of a pot with a tight fitting lid. Test the eggs by covering them with water. If the eggs stand up, they are old, but fine. If they float, they are bad. Remove eggs from water with a spider strainer and bring the water to a boil.
3. Set a timer for 13 minutes, lower the eggs into the water with a spider strainer, cover with lid, remove from heat and start the timer.
4. While the eggs are cooking, get a bowl full of water ready to lower the eggs into. When the timer goes off, use the spider strainer to move the eggs from the hot water to the regular water for 2 minutes.
5. Test one right right away, make notes about the results, and store in the fridge for later.

Why It Works

1. Many people claim the older eggs are easier to peel because the membrane shrinks. That may be true. I like to hard boil old eggs because you can see how old they are by putting them in a pot of water.
2. As eggs age, water inside evaporates and is replaced by gases. This creates an air bubble that makes the egg either stand up or float.
3. Technically, these eggs are poached in their shell in water that starts out boiling, not hard boiled eggs.
4. This may seem like a lot of moving the eggs around and if you don’t like that, skip step 2, but don’t skip this step. You are gently stopping the cooking.
5. This method should result in an egg that’s immediately peel-able. When you make notes, write down the cooking time, the cooling time, the consistency of the yolk, the color of the yolk. (There should never have a green ring around it. That means it’s overcooked.) If it’s perfect, great. If not, next time, adjust the cooking time based on your preferences.

Mods:

1. This way is good if you want to test the eggs and you don’t mind moving eggs from place to place four times. Also, it uses more water than necessary. If these things bother you, here’s another method:
   • Start a full electric tea kettle to boil.
   • Put as many eggs as you can/want in 1 layer on the bottom of a pot with a tight fitting lid.
   • When it boils, pour the entire tea kettle into the pot, being careful not to pour directly onto an egg.
   • Set a timer for 15 minutes, cover with lid, and steam them.
   • Remove them from the water and store them in the fridge.

* None of the methods used here technically boil the eggs. The move above poaches them and the mod steams them.