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Pressure Cooker Baked Beans

As you see I really love my pressure cooker so much that I use it nearly every single day almost. There is not a day that doesn’t go by when I am not thinking about a bean or lentil dish. They are great because some beans take up to 5 hours to prepare on just regular stovetop method. That is why most use a slow cooker otherwise known as a crockpot for making beans because you can put it in there and just come back later to check on them later on in the day. We are going to do this the fast and easy way via the pressure cooker.

The type of beans being used for this dish are navy, great northern, small white bean, white kidney beans, etc. It just has to be a white bean. I used 1 cup of navy beans for this. I washed and soaked these beans for 12 hour to overnight.

I added 4 tbs of olive oil in the pressure cooker. Vegetable and canola oil can be used too. I caramelized 1 onion. It could be any color of onion, just do not add the long green ones it doesn’t belong in this recipe. I added 2 garlic cloves and cooked it for a minute until the rawness went away.

I added 1 pinch each of Paprika, dry mustard powder and red chili powder. I put in my mortar and pestle the whole spices that I had ground for the beans are 4 allspice berries, 2 cloves, 1 pinch of black peppercorns and ground them up in to a coarse powder, grated up to an equivalent to 1 pinch of nutmeg and add it to the pressure cooker along with 1 bay leaf. Add 4 shakes of seasoned salt or 3 pinches of vegtea seasoning. I added 2 pinches of turbinado sugar too, 2 tbs of either honey, or agave nectar, or pure maple syrup can be also added as a sweetener of choice.

Add 2 tbs each of apple cider vinegar, or balsamic vinegar, tomato paste, molasses and black strap molasses. Add 4 dashes each of Worcestershire sauce liquid smoke (for vegetarian option only)..

Add the white beans to the the pressure cooker and stirred to catch all of the seasonings. Add 1 liter or 1 quart of water to the beans and mix. At this point you can add halal smoked turkey. They sell it at the halal store I go to. Also you can add 4 pieces of either beef or turkey bacon cut in to bits for those that desire meat. Or you can add 4 halal chicken, turkey or beef franks cut in to slices.

Close the pressure cooker, turn the stove on medium, wait for safety button to pop up and turn on the timer for 20 minutes. When time is up turn the stove off and let the pressure release on its own. After the safety button has went down open the pressure cooker and see if the beans and the smoked turkey, if using are soft. If so you do not need to put it on for additional minutes. If so then close and turn the stove back on, wait for safety button to pop up and set for 10 minutes. When time is up let the pressure release a final time and you are done.

At this point you can enjoy the fruits of your labor. This picture above is the franks and beans option if you add this then no liquid smoke is needed. You only use it if it is a vegan option. The vegan option is great also for Nigerian vegetable salad and a bunch of African bloggers has the recipes on their site. I even tried it out once and I found it very yummy.

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