Jim's Bean Jar (Ultimate Edition)
Hello, in this, my first blog post I’m going to be posting my bean-jar recipe. It’s fairly well reviewed with friends and family. If you make it and you like it, drop me a message or post to let me know.
THIS MAKES A BIG (circa 5L) BEAN JAR, IF YOU WANT LESS, HALVE THE INGREDIENTS.
The Necessary Ingredients
- 1000g Pork Shoulder
- 1000g Large Yellow or White Onions
- 500g Dried Haricot or a mix of Haricot & Butter Beans
- 500ml Beef Stock, Bovril or Marmite in a pinch.
- Oil, butter, dripping or other cooking fats.
- Salt, Pepper
- Optional: Dried Parsley, Rocquettes Cider
You will also need a slow cooker or suitable oven dish. If you wish to eat it today, invent a time machine and go back at least 24 hours.
The Method:
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First, feed the carrots you mistakenly bought to the nearest Donkey, they can’t ruin your bean jar then and the Donkey will add to the ambience.
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Soak the beans in a large bowl of water over night, at least 12 hours. When drained you’ll have about a kg of wet beans.
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Dice the onions quite fine, you should have about 800g once trimmed, skinned and diced.
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Add the onions to a big pan on a low to medium heat with some oil or butter. Keep stirring until all the onions are soft and translucent, and just starting to brown on the edges.
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Mix the beans and onions in the final cooking dish (slow cooker, oven dish, etc).
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Chunk your pork shoulder into thick (>1in / 30mm) steaks. Season liberally with Salt and Pepper on all sides.
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Heat a frying pan to high heat, verge of smoking. Add oil, dripping, or that morning’s bacon fat and then place the Pork steaks in, if your pan is small do them one or two at a time. Leave for a few minutes on each side to develop a delicious, brown crust.
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Bury the browned pork steaks in the beans and onions.
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Pour some stock or cider into the hot frying pan to deglaze and lift any pork morsels and browning from the pan. Pour over the pork/beans/onions.
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Pour the rest of the stock over the ingredients, add hot water or rocquettes cider if the ingredients aren’t covered.
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Cook on lowest heat for a minimum of 10 hours. Ideally, cook for 12hours, rest for 6 and then re-heat and stir.
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Add more Salt and Pepper to taste before serving.
Serving
Ideally served in a bowl with fresh crusty bread and Guernsey butter to dip. If you have it, try Celery Salt instead of normal salt.
Why you probably don’t want to add carrots: Carrots add a lot of sugar to the bean jar and if you are planning on eating your bean jar over a couple of days you can end up with an off taste as the sugar begins to ferment after a couple of days. If you’re eating it all in one or two sittings then it’s less of an issue but really, carrots add little in either flavour or texture in a dish this thoroughly cooked down so it’s probably a waste unless you really just need to use them up or something.