If you are late to the game and haven’t heard of the Instant Pot, then listen up! This single kitchen item is about to change your life. Busy mamas, this is for you! It’s about to save you time, energy and your sanity helping you to breeze through bewitching hour every night 🙂
I’ve always loved the idea of pressure cookers. It is a method of cooking that allows you to cook healthy food fast! Who doesn’t love that combo?!?
Not sure about you, but one of the hardest parts for me about getting a new gadget is finding the time to learn how to use it properly or in this case finding the good recipes! So here is one of our absolute favorites to make! It is easy and works every time 🙂
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Brazilian beans
Unlike any beans you have ever had, these Brazilian beans are stocked full of flavor and are a hearty, healthy and filling meal. When I married my Brazilian hubby, I also married his love of food. Ever heard the saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? Yup, I married that guy 🙂
Being that Brazil is known for amazing healthy and flavorful food, and the fact that my mother in law is an amazing cook, and I’m not :), I’ve had my work cut out for me 🙂
However, thankfully she is amazing and willingly shared her recipe for this traditional Brazilian meal 🙂 Hope you and your family enjoy as much as we do!
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This recipe is for a 6 qt Instant Pot and makes a big batch. I like making extra so that I have enough for two full meals worth, and then I freeze the rest in smaller portions in Freezer Ziploc baggies. This is the easiest way to thaw quickly for a meal!
If you have a smaller Instant Pot or want to make less, halve the entire recipe.
What you need:
- 2.2 lbs Dried black beans
- 5 strips of Bacon
- 6 sausages
- 1 Medium sized onion
- 11 Cloves of garlic
- 3 Bay leaves
- 1/4 Cup of olive oil
- Salt to taste
- farofa– topping for when done
- Instant Pot
- Mini-prep food processor
Directions:
Before starting this recipe, measure out your beans, put in a large bowl and add enough water to completely cover the beans. Then soak them for about an hour.
Step 1 – Heat oil
After plugging in your Instant Pot, press the SAUTE button and add 1/4 cup of Olive Oil to the bottom of the pot to heat.
Make sure the lid is off the Instant Pot any time you are sauteing.
Step 2 – Dice garlic and onion
First off, save yourself a lot of time and mess and buy pre-peeled cloves of garlic! You will still maintain the same level of freshness and benefit of fresh garlic in your cooking, but you lose the mess and hassle!
Make sure you are choosing cloves of garlic that are all a decent size and of similar size. If you do use the small cloves, add a second small one for every normal garlic clove you would use.
Peel your onion and cut into larger chunks. (No need to dice or cut in small pieces! This is purely to make dicing it more effective)
Using a mini-prep food processor like this one, add in your garlic cloves and onion chunks and make that processor work for you!
Step 3 – Saute onions and garlic
While you were dicing your onions and garlic, your oil should have had plenty of time to heat up. Now you are ready to add to the Instant Pot.
This is the only part of this process you need to stick around for. While sauteing, make sure you are stirring consistently as well as scraping the bottom of the pan so no pieces stick to the bottom or burn!
When the onions are clear and soft, you are done with this step. Hit the CANCEL button on the Instant Pot.
This is the most important step of this! Add one cup of water to the bottom of the pan and using a wooden spoon/spatula, scrape the entire bottom. Make sure there are no pieces stuck. Otherwise, when you start to cook, you will get an error message about 20 minutes in and the pot will turn off automatically.
Step 4 – Add remaining ingredients
Now is the time to add:
- pre-soaked beans
- 5 pieces of bacon- chopped
- 6 sausages- sliced
- 3 bay leaves
- 9 cups of water
Step 5 – Cook!
Place Instant Pot lid and secure on top. (I love this brand because it will not allow you to cook unless the lid is properly secured and safe!)
Press the PRESSURE COOK button and adjust time to 45 minutes.
Once it is done cooking, add salt to taste and then stir.
All done!
That’s it! The best part is, now that all your ingredients are in, the pot will do the rest. No need to stand over the pot stirring every so often or making sure it doesn’t overflow. You’re done!
What I like to do while the food is cooking, I clean up my mess from prepping. Load my dishwasher, return unused ingredients to the fridge, etc. This means that by the time your beans are done, you have a clean kitchen!
Can you imagine how good it will feel to sit down to dinner with a kitchen already clean!?!?!? Yup, pretty sure that is the best feeling ever.
Make it a full meal
In addition to the cleanup, I usually start a batch of rice and make these Brazilian cheese balls (pao de queijo) to make this popular Brazilian meal complete.
If you want the full Brazilian experience, eat these beans with rice, topped with something they call farofa (bread crumbs + other flavorful ingredients), pao de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread) and enjoy with a refreshing glass of matte (Brazilian ice tea).
This is hands down, the very favorite meal in my house; kids included. Maybe your kids are better eaters than mine, but for this to be a favorite for a 6 and 5-year-old is saying something in my book 🙂
Enjoy and be sure to leave a comment letting me know what you think 😉
XO,
Morgan
