Pinto Beans & Cornbread, Best Old Fashioned Southern Cooks

Sit right back, the time is now. Tammy's gonna show you how to cook it up like Mama used to do. Well, she didn't make cities, she showed you tricks. Before too long, it all will click, and the all-star of the kitchen will be you. Hey y'all, it's Tammy with Collard Valley Cooks, and when I was growing up, we always had pinto beans and cornbread. I don't know about you, but I could make a meal out of it. We're gonna start by showing you how I make my pinto beans on the stovetop and my good ol' crunchy cornbread. Let's get started. Alright, today we are gonna make some good ol' pinto beans. Nothing better than pinto beans. And you can tell a difference in a pinto bean, and whether it's a good pinto, by how dark they are. So these are nice and light and pretty. You don't want to buy a bag of beans that have a bunch of dark beans. And to tell you the truth, the Goya brand is typically a little cleaner as well, so the beans are not as dirty and full of dirt as the ones that are the off-brands. Pinto beans are super easy to make. What people do most of the time is they make the mistake of trying to boil them the day that they want to eat them. And if you do decide to do that, and you want to boil them at a higher temperature, make sure you don't add the salt. You can add salt if you're gonna soak them and simmer them. You just do not need to add salt if you're gonna cook them at a high temperature or it will make the whole of the bean tough. Now, I am going to just lube these right quick, so as you pour them into your pot, you just want to kind of lube them and see if there's any clumps, rots, anything like that. Or really dirty or ugly beans, like this one's an ugly one. And try to catch them as they're going in. It's not going to hurt anybody necessarily if you don't. Now, a rock would probably hurt somebody if they bit into it, so you want to make sure and not get those in there. Now, you're going to rinse your beans. And I typically just run them with hot water, wash them. And if I've got a good brand of bean, I'm going to be honest with y'all, I don't always pour off the water. Now, you can tell by looking at this water, it's still clean. That's the difference in a Goya brand bean or a Camilla or the better brands of beans compared to a store brand. But you're going to be able to tell because when you pick up beans and you look at them, lots of times if you get the store brand or a cheaper brand, they are just really dirty. And I mean dirty. But these are pretty clean, you can tell. And if you've got a bean that's pretty clean, you don't have to drain it. But I'll drain it for you guys. So you just want to drain your beans. And some people rinse them more than once. I don't. This is how I do my beans, alright? So you don't always have to, this is for 16 ounces of beans. It's in my first cookbook. And I have different methods of cooking on the recipe. Now, you don't have to always add meat to beans to make them taste good. And if you're going to soak them overnight, especially if you plan to do like your granny did and leave them on the stove, do not put any meat in there, okay? Make sure you don't. Don't put your meat in until the day that you're going to cook them. So I add a little oil. If you want to know how much, you can look at the recipe. This is for 16 ounces of beans. I add a vegetable bouillon, which is a Knorr brand. You don't have to do this step if you don't want to, but it's good, okay? And then I add beef bouillon. It's my favorite for pintos. If I'm making a lighter bean, like a butter bean or a navy bean, then I like to use chicken. But for pintos, I like to use a beef. Okay, that was beef bouillon. And then what we're going to do is we're going to add a little salt and pepper to them. And you're going to want to add water until it's about two knuckles deep over the beans. Now, my sister used this recipe, y'all, and she made like three pounds of beans. And she went, Tammy, it said two knuckles high. And I said, Melissa, that was for 16 ounces of beans? That's what the recipe said. So if you're going to use three times that many beans, then you've got to add that many knuckles, okay? So just giving you a heads up on that when you're wanting about two knuckles high over your beans when you're just doing a 16-ounce bag. Other than that, you're going to have to add a little more extra water because these beans are going to soak up the water, and it's going to make a difference. So you can look in here. You're just going to kind of slosh them around and get them about equal. And you can tell I don't quite have enough water in there. And it doesn't matter what pot you're using. You just need to have it about two knuckle high. That's really close. Then you're going to put them on the stove. This is actually my green bean pot, okay? And you're going to bring it to a boil. So go ahead and put the lid on it. But don't go too far because once it starts to boil, you don't want it to boil over. And once it comes to a boil, I'm going to take the lid off of it. You can put a wooden spoon over the top so it doesn't boil over if you want to. And you're going to boil it for 20 minutes. We're going to slide them to the back of the stove. And y'all, I can guarantee you one thing. These are going to be delicious without any meat in them. But you can always add that meat if you really like it. The next day, after you get it out of the refrigerator, then put your meat in. But you definitely don't want meat in your beans and them sitting out too long, okay? Okay, I tell you to use a half teaspoon of pepper. And I tell you to use two teaspoons of salt, which is a lot of salt. Especially with that bouillon in there. So I think I'm going to use half of it. Usually they turn out perfect. But you always want to, you can add half of the salt if you want to. And then add the other half after they cook. Whatever you want to do. Of course, salt is by taste on any recipe. So keep that in mind. And we're going to get these to boiling about for a gap in salt and pepper. Alright, this is in five minutes. They have been sitting on the stove five minutes. And so they came to a boil pretty quick. Because I had a lid on them. So now I'm going to set my timer for 20 minutes. Okay, my timer is about to go off. You can see they still have water in them. You're going to turn them off. Put your lid on them. Slide them to the back of the stove. And let them sit there until you go to bed. Before you put them in the refrigerator, you'll make sure they're covered in water. Alright, the pintos are ready to bring to a simmer. So I'm going to go ahead and turn them on. You can go ahead and taste your beans. And see if they've got enough salt in them. At this point. And just make sure that you don't boil them on high. And they should be delicious. Okay, this is a 10.25 inch skillet. It's nice and seasoned. It's pretty old. But even if you don't have a real seasoned skillet, you can still make some good cornbread. So take you some shortening. And do a good job greasing it. And make sure your shortening is not old. If you open up your shortening and you've had it a while. And you smell it and it smells bad. It's going to make your food taste bad too. Okay. So now what we do is we put just a little bit of cornmeal in here. And this helps the cornbread be crunchy when you get it out. A lot of people think they've got to heat their skillets up and stuff. But you don't have to. If you just do this, I'm telling you, you'll have some good cornbread. There's nothing better that goes with Pinto's than cornbread. And I make the best cornbread around because I use White Lily Buttermilk Cornmeal Mix. This is what the bag looks like at the grocery store. A lot of y'all probably use it. I love it. It makes delicious cornbread. I put a lot of butter in my cornbread. And that makes it good too. So we're going to get started right now with our cornbread. Okay. So we use three-quarter cup of butter. And I go ahead and I melt it in the microwave. And don't put your egg in there while it's hot or it's like to cook it. Get that in there good. And now we're going to add buttermilk. Now I don't tell you, I tell you about a cup and a half of whole buttermilk. But it may not take as much of thinner buttermilk. So just keep that in mind. So we're going to use two cups of White Lily Buttermilk Cornmeal Mix. Making cornbread is simple and, boy, is it good, especially when you're having some beans. We'll go ahead and add a cup and a half. And this is whole buttermilk or thicker buttermilk. Not everybody can get it. So if you can't get it, that's fine. Use low-fat. Some brands are better than others with the low-fat. Some are actually pretty creamy, even if they're low-fat, and then some are not. You'll just have to shop around and try the different brands until you find one you really like. So you're just going to mix this up good. And it should be kind of wet. Make sure you get all the cornmeal off the sides and bottom of your bowl and get it in there good. Okay, we're going to get this in the skillet and get it in the oven at 425 degrees. This is a new ice maker that I agreed to... I did not purchase it. They sent it to me for free for doing a review on it. Now, I don't typically do that, and I've already had one ice maker. This makes the soft, chewable, delicious ice like you get at Sonic. This is our second one, and we already like it a lot better. For one, the ice is enclosed inside the unit instead of it being on the outside of the unit in a drawer, which makes it melt a lot quicker. So that's the first thing that's better than the GE one that we got. I'm going to let Chris tell you a few more things about why we like it better, and I'm going to make a glass of Coca-Cola to go with our pinto beans. I'm going to open this up. This is really nice. It was super simple to put together and fast to get ice going real quick. It wasn't complicated. You can see the ice is in pieces about that big, and they're chewable, like they're Spondee-like. Delicious. It's not a hard, clear ice. I'm going to make me a drink and show you how it looks. This is nice to have around this time of year because we're having more people in the house for parties and stuff like that. We will give you a link to the unit once we are finished with this video. Just look in the description post. I'll probably show you guys this unit more than once in case somebody misses it in this video. This is Coke Zero. Me and Chris really like Coke Zero. We're going to pour it in here. I tried to put it in a mason jar so y'all could actually see the ice. It's a little bit bigger pieces than the GE ice maker we had, which I like as well. I like the bigger pieces because they don't melt as quick. Delicious, refreshing, easy. This unit, I believe, lists for $399. That's subject to change, of course. Our cornbread is done. We're going to get it out of the oven. I'm going to flip it and let you see how beautiful it turned out. I got it nice and brown. That way it will be super crunchy and absolutely delicious with our pinto beans. Get you a round plate. As soon as it comes out of the oven, you're going to flip it upside down on the plate. It should come right out just like that. It should be nice and crunchy on the top. Nothing better than a good piece of cornbread that's nice and hot. Let me show you how good it looks. It's popping hot out of the oven. That's when it's really good with some butter. Looks good, doesn't it? I must confess that we've already ate some of our beans that I made. The kids came over the same night I put them on to simmer. Tonight, today for lunch, what we're going to do is I'm going to add this butter in here. Just enough to brown some diced ham. We're going to put it in our pintos and have it with cornbread for lunch. Today's a football day. Chris is fishing. It's Saturday. What we're going to do is just melt some of this butter in here. We're going to add a pack of diced ham. We're just going to brown up this ham and put it in our delicious beans that we made. I'm going to tell you, these beans are something else. Delicious. While that's getting brown, I'm going to pour my beans over here in a skillet to warm them. Since it's already dirty from making the cornbread. There's my beans. It made a really nice dark broth. See how dark the broth is? I made them just like you saw me make them. I didn't put anything different in them. That's how they turned out. I just had some of this. Lots of times you can get this cubed diced ham at a very good price. Lots of times it's on sale. You can deglaze this a little bit and add it to the beans if you want to. It's got a lot of flavor. All I did is add just a dab of water to it. See all those brown delicious bits from the ham? We're going to get that in the beans too. I like ham in my beans, but I personally do not like bacon. We're going to let these heat up a minute. Cook down a little bit so that they're just a little bit thicker. Then we're going to eat them with our cornbread. It's going to be real good. All right, I think they're ready. I'm going to turn them off and pour some up. All right, y'all. We're going to get us some pinto beans. Delicious. That's good. That's just good, y'all. I know. A lot of y'all use your crock pot when you make your pinto beans. They never just come out just right. I'm going to tell you, if you do what I ask you to do, they're going to be delicious. Even if you want to put them in the crock pot, use my ingredients and give it a try. I hope y'all have enjoyed watching Colored Valley Cooks where we cook like our mamas did. Now, y'all go make you some pinto beans and cornbread. We'll see you next time. Love you. Bye. Yeah, the best thing about this, I mean it's pretty big, okay? But the best thing about it is you don't have to have distilled water or anything like that. Like that old unit, this Paris Rhone does not require the distilled water. And when you put the water in, all you have to do is this unit right here comes out. That's where all your ice is held. So if you want to dump out all your ice, you can dump out all your ice out of that little tray there. And the water, you just pour right into that. That's all you have to do. Oh, that's simple. Yeah, it is super simple. So there's no bunch of cords and stuff like the last one. The other one had so many things we had to do to get it to run. It had all this digital stuff. All this one has is on and off and clean. And that's it. All I had to do was turn it on. That's so nice compared to the last one. Because the last one had water tubing. But you had to hook up and unhook to do the cleaning. It was complicated. Yeah, this one was all together. And I didn't have to hook up anything. I just plugged it in. Now it does have a feature where you can plug it directly into your water line. Like your refrigerator ice maker. And then you never have to fill it. It fills itself. I didn't use that feature because we don't have a water line in here for this refrigerator. So this one is much easier. How do you flip the thing around? I don't know, but you're getting it so close. You're not going to want any of the stuff that you need on it. Wow. All right, go ahead. Wrap it up. But this one has great features. Way better than that other one. And this is made just like an industrial ice maker. Like if you go into a store and they have one of those big industrial ice makers. That's how this is made. So it works. All right. We're happy. And it doesn't take a whole lot of room up on the counter. So it did not fit underneath our cabinets. But now this is an older home. And so maybe your cabinets, you can just get the dimensions off the product. Don't ask us for the dimensions. Just look at the product description on Amazon. And look at the dimensions of the actual products and not just the box to see if it would fit underneath your counter. Yep. See, and it's saying to add water now. Yeah, we've been using a good bit of ice. So you just add water until the light goes off or what? I'll show you. So since I got the ice out, the add water light did come on. And it's not lighting up now maybe because it took the basket out. So this is it right here. You've got a clean button, an on and off button, and an ice pool. And you can empty your ice and let it continue to make ice if you're about to have a big party. And all I do is just pour it in there. There's a max fill line. Let me show you how good it looks. Now it's popping hot out of the oven. And that's when it's really good with some butter. Looks good, doesn't it?