Cooking in A Bean Pot

Unfortunately with the death of our baby granddaughter cooking and blogging took a back seat.

A couple of weeks ago we needed to save Dale’s frequent flier miles so made a quick trip to Taos, New Mexico. We wanted to visit the Picuris Pueblo, see their pottery and eat New Mexican foods.

We ended up buying 2 bean pots, one from the woman who made that one and one that her daughter had made. She assured us that the one her daughter had made was ready to make beans and hers needed to be cured.

We have done lots of reading on these pots; they have mica in them so have a glittery look. The pots are not decorated because they are utilitarian.

So we started with the pot made by the woman we bought it from, Irene Samboro. We 1^st filled it with water then put it on the new heat diffuser we’d bought and turned on the heat to between medium and med-low. Our stove being a Viking isn’t like the run of the mill stoves so heat is a little different. After about 5 minutes water started pouring out of the sides and we had to take the pot off. There was a crack around ½ of the bottom and several up the sides. Well there went $230.

The daughter’s, Threse Tohtsoni-Prudencio’s,  pot did hold water fine so it was time to add some beans. I put in 2#’s of beans, they came to below the rim then added some filtered water to cover, ½ onion chopped and some garlic. I put the heat on low for an hour then med-low, this was at 4pm. By 11pm the beans were crunchy and had expanded so much that I’d taken off about 3C of beans by then. This morning I started the pot again and upped the heat to above med-low after an hour. By 4 the beans were barely crunchy so I put them in a regular pot and pumped up the heat.

The beans tasted really good but this bean pot cooking is going to be a challenge.