Brazilian Black Beans - Every Day Food

I am a big fan of beans. Particularly black beans - I love the versatility of cooking once and having beans to use in a variety of ways for the next few days. These days that quality is key as it relieves the pressure of daily cooking. Cooking dinner every night just isn't going to happen now that Quinn goes to bed at 7 pm on a daily basis. But, recipes like this mean I have something to work with after he goes down.

This recipe caught my eye in a recent Every Day Food issue. I'm pretty faithful to my favorite black bean recipe but I was intrigued by the step of cooking the beets in the beans. It seemed simple enough, but I would have never thought to do it. So I deviated from the norm, and gave the recipe a whirl.

This recipe was simple enough, and yet the taste belied the basic ingredients. There was no discernible beet quality to the beans (we wouldn't have minded if there were), and I liked having a vegetable side ready to go as the beans were done. I ended up mixing beans bought in two different stores which ended up with some beans underdone, but that was my mistake and not terribly detrimental to the dish as a whole. I served the beans with brown rice, sprinkled with the recommended sides seen above in a picture from the Every Day Food website. We also enjoyed simply braised collard greens to round out the meal.

I'm not sure I would make this particular recipe again because I think it is simple enough that I can create something like it in the future without following a recipe. But Mike and I both liked the idea of cooking the beets in the beans, and plan to tinker with that again in the future. And, with some planning ahead (and cooking beans ahead) the final steps in this recipe definitely made it weeknight worthy.