Red Beans and Rice; From Ancient Native Americans to Haitian Refugees in 1800.
If New Orleans Had a Special Anthem For Food, This Would Get the Stand-Up Salute.
What could be more boring than beans?
You may be forgiven for thinking “not much.” Of all the foods known to humans, beans seem unfortunately to rank among the lowest foods on the scale in terms of appeal, certainly in terms of glamour.
But on any given Monday in New Orleans this is emphatically not the case. When you ladle hot red beans over a mound of steaming rice and garnish that with a chunk of smoked sausage, you wind up with a world-class, one-dish lunch that a whole lot of people, especially in that city, prefer over filet mignon or lobster or anything else. To a lesser extent this is true along the whole Gulf Coast. There is a reason.
When you slowly simmer a pot of red beans all day with onions, green onions, parsley, celery, chili peppers and a big hunk of ham so that the kitchen smells like the dining room you expect to find when you get to Heaven, you suddenly understand why these beans rank so high among those familiar with them.
Accordingly, many New Orleans restaurants, not just the posh, well-known places but those across the whole spectrum, serve red beans and rice for lunch. You’re likely to see mud-caked pipeline workers sitting next to bankers and lawyers in suits, all gleefully munching away at steaming plates of red beans and rice. It’s a long-standing tradition, especially on Mondays. That would not be the case if red beans and rice didn’t make your tongue lovingly lap your brain.
Those red beans and 3,500 other related species of beans derive from Mexico, Peru and pre-Columbian Middle America and their use dates back as far as 4,000 years. Native American peoples valued them highly, growing the plants co-mingled with corn so that nitrogen would be fixed in the soil and the beans would have support as they grew up the cornstalks.
Ancient people in the Americas are responsible for the addition of beans into the diets of everybody else in the world. From Boston baked beans to Carolina crowder peas, black eyed peas, pork and beans and pinto beans, their spread was made possible by America’s indigenous people, from Aztecs to Cherokees. Columbus saw bean plants tended in gardens of folks in the Bahamas and brought the seeds back to Europe.
French sugar plantation owners in Haiti during the 18th Century, found beans and rice to be a cheap way to feed their slaves while maintaining high levels of nutrition. The affection for this dish spread throughout the entire Haitian culture, and became a favorite.
A bloody slave revolt in the Caribbean got it started
If any place in the world could be mistaken for Hell, Haiti in the 1700’s would be it. French plantations used slave labor to produce most of the world’s supply of sugar. They became very rich. The slaves were poorly kept and badly treated and many died within the first two years of arriving on the island. This resulted in the almost constant importation of more slaves from west Africa, notably Nigeria. By 1791, slaves outnumbered every other ethnic group in Haiti and groups of them staged several uprisings in which whites were brutally murdered.
The revolt lasted a little over 12 years, ending in 1804 with the former colony’s independence. It involved black, biracial, French, Spanish and British participants and was the only slave uprising which led to the founding of a state. It was also the largest slave uprising since the unsuccessful one led by Spartacus against the Romans almost 1,900 years earlier.
Many of the Haitian people, black, mixed-race and white, fled the island during the revolution and settled in New Orleans, bringing with them a fondness for beans and rice. Nobody knows for certain if this was the beginning of the city’s love affair with red beans and rice but it appears to have a high degree of probability.
Local legend has it that the dish was most popular on Mondays. This was because housekeepers had to do laundry that day. It was easier to make supper by simply letting a Sunday dinner’s leftover ham simmer unattended all day in red beans.
You Can Do This
Rinse and then soak a pound of dry red beans in water to cover (by a couple of inches) in the refrigerator overnight. Then early the next day, fry a quarter-pound of bacon in a large pot until the bacon is crisp. Then remove the bacon and finely chop it and throw it back in the pot.
Toss in 2 onions chopped, 2 stalks chopped celery, 1 bunch chopped green onions, 2 cloves smashed garlic, half of a green bell pepper, one seeded and diced jalapeno pepper, 5 or 6 sprigs of parsley chopped fine. Let this fry on medium-low heat until the onions get translucent.
Add a gallon of water and two heaping tablespoons of “Better than Bouillion” chicken base paste and bring to a low boil. Then turn the heat down to low. (The chicken base paste eliminates the need for salt.)
Add the soaked, drained and rinsed beans. (I prefer to soak and rinse the beans twice over 16 hour period).
Add one ham shank (about a pound) and 2-3 bay leaves.
Add some red and black pepper and Tabasco to your taste.
Add one pound of smoked sausage and/or kielbassa cut into 1-inch pieces.
Turn heat to low and allow the pot to simmer for 6 to 7 hours, adding a little water occasionally as needed. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking.
You may want to remove about a cup or more of the beans late in the cooking process and run them in a blender for a couple of seconds. Then add them back to the pot to add for a creamier texture.
Serve with rice, hot French bread and a garnish of fresh parsley.
Disclaimer
There is no way today that anybody can verify with absolute certainty that red beans and rice came to New Orleans exclusively from Haitian refugees.
However …
People fleeing the ravages of the slave rebellion there in the early 1800’s included white French settlers, free blacks and mixed blood individuals. All of them would have been familiar with beans and rice … long a favorite combination throughout the Caribbean. That they brought with them a fondness for their red beans and rice is a valid assumption which has stood the test of time and the discriminating tastes of New Orleans.
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