All posts tagged: beans

7 ways to use up that can of black beans

7 ways to use up that can of black beans

There’s a certain genre of pantry items that feels, if not immortal, then at least immune to the normal rules of time. Canned beans fall squarely into that category. They sit there — stacked, slightly dusty, always in greater quantity than you remember buying — waiting for a moment that never quite arrives. Which is how you ended up with five cans of beans and no idea how to use them. Lately, beans have gotten a bit of a rebrand. “Fibermaxxing” is all the rage these days, and black beans are the poster child of the trend. But long before they were algorithmically optimized, they were just — useful. Cheap, filling, endlessly adaptable. The kind of ingredient you buy for one specific recipe and then keep rediscovering, whether through social media content or “I need to clean out the fridge” panic. For me, black beans are less about planning and more about recovery; what I make when I have half a can left, an onion on its last leg, and a vague sense that I …

De’Longhi’s PrimaDonna Aromatic is a super-automatic espresso machine that learns about you and your beans

De’Longhi’s PrimaDonna Aromatic is a super-automatic espresso machine that learns about you and your beans

Sign Up For Goods 🛍️ Product news, reviews, and must-have deals. Anyone can pull an espresso shot. Pulling a good one, however, can be a lifelong pursuit. Every new bag of beans is a new problem to solve. You have to accommodate a different roast, a different density, a different age, all of which mean a different grind size, dose, and temperature if you want the shot to actually taste good. The process can literally feel like working in a laboratory, which can be cool, but not when you’re bleary eyed and trying to get caffeinated. The trial and error of dialing in your espresso isn’t always a joyous pursuit. The De’Longhi PrimaDonna Aromatic is the first home machine I’ve tested that genuinely alleviates that learning curve. Its new Bean Adapt and Adaptive Grinding technologies do the thing every super-automatic has claimed to do for a decade but has never really delivered: they read the beans you put in, set the machine up for them, and then keep adjusting as the shots come out. This …

Bitter is beautiful. Greens and beans for grown-ups

Bitter is beautiful. Greens and beans for grown-ups

The marvelous novelist and food writer Laurie Colwin once cautioned against serving rapini on a first date. (Although one might argue for its salubrious winnowing effect.) In my own home I watched a dinner guest assiduously remove every piece of radicchio from her salad. Since then, I’ve tried not to serve bitter greens to guests unless I know they “get” them. I have a particular love for the chicories, the bitter lettuces, which include radicchio (red, pink, green and speckled varieties), endive, escarole and dandelion greens, not to mention all the dark leafy varieties of chicory the Italians consume, like dente de leone, spada and the strange, crunchy, not-so-leafy, many-lobed bulb called puntarelle. A quick saute of greens before they are paired with lima beans. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times) There are also the bitter brassicas like rapini and its milder cousin, spigarelli; plus kale; collards, turnip and mustard greens, which all get their bitterness from glucosinolates, natural chemicals that evolved to defend the plants against insects, herbivores and diseases — yet fail …

I Tested 20 Bags of Grocery Store Coffee. These Are the 5 Best Beans to Brew

I Tested 20 Bags of Grocery Store Coffee. These Are the 5 Best Beans to Brew

1: Intelligentsia House Blend Trendy Intelligentsia coffee isn’t worth the steep price. Katherine Peach/CNET Intelligentsia is a Chicago-founded roaster that’s become a widespread specialty coffee brand in grocery stores coast to coast. At $20 for a 12-ounce bag of whole beans at my local Brooklyn grocery store, Intelligentsia House Blend coffee can be considered an investment. The lack of a “roasted by” date on the bag, however, means freshness is a gamble. This tester ended up with a whisper of flavor with three months left on the “best by” date. It lacked any noticeable tasting notes, potentially due to an overstay in the grocery aisle. The Intelligentsia House Blend bag also lacks any tasting note descriptors or instructions whatsoever on the packaging.  Even with low expectations, the beans still produced a bland cup of coffee, firmly placing it in the “low” category. If you’re interested in drinking Intelligentsia coffee, I’d recommend heading to the brand’s coffee shops or purchasing a fresh bag straight from the roaster.  What to try instead: Groundwork Groundwork’s Organic Bitches Blend …

Murdered Midland nurse ‘planned to spill beans about grubby secret’

Murdered Midland nurse ‘planned to spill beans about grubby secret’

A nurse whose murder has remained unsolved for nearly 70 years was savagely silenced to prevent her spilling the beans about a grubby secret at the hospital where she worked, it is claimed. Mother-of-five Martha Giles, killed at Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital, may have been a whistleblower wiped out before she opened the can of worms, her family believe. And that is why calls to make public sealed Metropolitan Police files on the case, including witness statements, held by the National Archives, have been steadfastly rebuffed. Following a decision to keep the dossier under wraps for a further 20 years, those details will remain under lock and key until at least 2055. Read more: Unsung hero ‘took Asda bag of Birmingham Mails’ to LA and changed Broad Street forever The battle for answers has now reached Parliament, with Sir Gavin Williamson, MP for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge, pushing to remove the cloak of secrecy that covers the case. He says Martha’s family have “waited too long for answers”. Of Martha’s immediate family, only daughter …

TikTok’s air fryer beans on toast recipe might upgrade the British classic

TikTok’s air fryer beans on toast recipe might upgrade the British classic

Sign up to IndyEat’s free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our food and drink newsletter for free Get our food and drink newsletter for free Beans on toast has always been one of Britain’s most reliable comforts. A tin of beans, a slice of toast, maybe a scattering of cheddar if you’re feeling generous – the sort of meal that appears at breakfast, lunch, dinner or midnight without anyone questioning it. It’s cheap, cheerful and deeply familiar, which is precisely why most people wouldn’t dream of tinkering with it. Naturally, TikTok has other ideas. With air fryers now firmly embedded in British kitchens – racking up more than 29 million Google searches and over half a million searches for air fryer recipes in the past month alone – it was probably only a matter of time before the nation’s most dependable comfort meal ended up in the basket. The viral version, shared by creator Elle Gibson, tweaks the formula just enough to make it interesting. Instead of piling beans onto …