Caribbean Rice and Beans Recipe

The Caribbean coast of Nicaragua distinguishes itself from the rest of the country in several notable ways. The majority languages are English and Creole rather than Spanish, and the residing population traces their ancestry back to Native American groups, escaped African slaves, the infamous pirates of the Caribbean, and a small number of other English speaking seafarers. The Spanish conquerors avoided the Atlantic region, partly due to the thick forest that shelters it from western and central Nicaragua and partly due to the alliance that existed between the British crown and local Amerindian groups.

Along this coast, the emblematic Nicaraguan dish gallo pinto is simply known as Rice & Beans and is fried in coconut oil from the ever-present palm trees that thrives along the salty beaches. In some families, the dish is also simmered in coconut milk.

Rice & Beans Ingredients

1 lb (450 grams) of fresh or soaked red beans
½ teaspoon of salt
10 sprigs of fresh or frozen cilantro / coriander
1 onion
½ sweet pepper
1 tablespoon of coconut oil to fry the rice
2 cups of uncooked white rice
3 cups of chicken or vegetable broth
3 tablespoons of coconut oil

How to make Caribbean rice and beans

Rinse the fresh or soaked beans well.
Place the beans in a pot and add fresh water until the surface is roughly 2.5 cm or 1 inch above the beans.
Add salt now if you like beans with hard shells; wait until later if you prefer them softer.
Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and leave the beans to simmer. (Cover the pot with a lid.)
While waiting for the beans to be ready, chop cilantro, onion and sweet pepper into very small pieces.
Pour 1 tablespoon of coconut oil into a big frying pan.
Heat up the oil before placing the dry, uncooked rice in the pan. Sauté the rice for two minutes over medium high heat. Be careful not to burn it. If you don’t fry the rice before cooking it, it can easily become really mushy – almost like porridge – when mixed with the other ingredients.
Add the cilantro, sweet pepper and ½ of the onion to the pan and continue to sauté for two more minutes.
Pour chicken broth into the pan and bring to a boil.
Reduce the heat under the frying pan and put on a lid. Leave to simmer until the rice is tender. (This will normally take roughly half an hour.)
Add the boiled beans to the pan together with the other half of the chopped onion.
Taste to see if you wish to add more salt.
Add 3 tablespoons of coconut oil and fry the dish for a few minutes.

How to make your own coconut milk from coconuts
As mentioned above, it is possible to give this dish even more of a coconut flavour by letting it simmer in coconut milk. You simply add the coconut milk together with the chicken broth; the more milk the stronger the taste. If you use a lot of coconut milk, decrease the amount of chicken broth accordingly. Along the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, families make their own homemade coconut milk from coconuts and you can do the same. If you can’t manage to find coconuts when shopping, desiccated coconut is a feasible alternative.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F or 175 degrees C.
Piece the eyes of the coconut and drain the liquid. Contrary to popular belief, the liquid present inside a coconut is not the same thing as coconut milk. You can use the liquid to make a nice rum drink if you don’t want to discard it.
Place the coconut on a rack and bake in the pre-heated oven for roughly half an hour.
Take the coconut out of the oven and leave it to cool down a bit.
Use a hammer to crack the shell and break up the coconut into several pieces.
Use a knife to remove the coconut meat from the shell. An ordinary table knife tends to be safer than a sharp knife.
Peel the brown skin off the coconut meat and cut the meat into very small pieces.
Pour hot water (1 cup of water for each cup of coconut meat) over the meat and leave it to soak for 10 minutes.
You now have to methods to choose among. Some cooks press the soaked coconut meat in their hand to extract the liquid. Others prefer to place another pot in the pot that holds the meat and press the top pot down to extract the liquid. Regardless of which method you use, a sieve or cloth will come in handy when its time to extract the very last drops of water.
Once the water is extracted, you can leave the coconut meat to soak in hot water again and repeat the process the get as much coconut milk as possible out of one batch of meat. The first extract will be thicker than the following ones and is especially suitable for recipes that require coconut cream. Following extracts are commonly used as thinners.
Use the coconut milk right away or store it in the refrigerator for up to two days. If you store it, the fatty coconut cream will float up to the surface.

Caribbean Rice and Beans recipe