Cacio e pepe beans and broccoli

[00:00] Somehow, I only just got hip to the idea that you can make nearly any pasta recipe with beans instead. I mean, it's not going to taste like pasta, but it's going to taste good. Let's do catch yo a pepe with beans.

[00:14] You can make this with canned beans, if you want, maybe don't drain them all the way. Throw them in a pot with some of their starchy goo and some additional water to get a saucy texture. Heat them up in your golden, but I'm using dried beans today.

[00:27] I've got a pound, half a kilo of great northern beans. I'm hiding the brand because I ended up not liking it and I just don't want to make any trouble. But white beans in general just tend to look better when paired with pasta-type sauces.

[00:41] I'll fill that up with regular water and just stow it away overnight to soak. Soak in cuts the cook time in half and I think it improves the texture. The next day they've plumped up, we've got some floating skins.

[00:53] That's not a great sign for bean quality, but here we go. I go back and forth on whether to drain the soak water. There is some weak evidence that draining helps with digestion. But the important thing now is I only want them covered by a couple of inches, a few centimeters of water.

[01:09] Just like when you're making catch yo a pepe with pasta, you want to concentrate the starch in the cook water because that thickens and stabilizes the sauce. I can always add water later if the pot gets too dry.

[01:21] I'm going to bring that up to a boil and for trapping heat I'm glad to have a tight-fitting lid on this beautiful new 4-quart saucepan from Maiden sponsor of this video. This baby was made in Italy. Call me basic, but I've been doing this for a lot of years and I've never cooked on anything better than stainless steel.

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[01:55] The handles are so comfortable and stay remarkably cool. The interior angles are perfect. It's really easy to get a whisk or a spoon in that corner. And that rolled rim is going to make pouring things out a lot cleaner in just a minute.

[02:09] It's oven safe, chemically non-reactive, which is why I was okay soaking beans in it overnight. Stainless is king. Get you some from Maiden. Check out my favorites with my link in the description and shop all their other great cookware.

[02:23] Thank you Maiden. Anyways, bring those beans up to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, and that should take an hour, an hour and a half. And I forgot salt. I do find that salting early helps bean skins to stay intact.

[02:36] The general rule of thumb is a tablespoon of salt per pound of beans, but I think that's a bad idea. The sauce is going to be like 50% very salty cheese, so I'm a hold back, one or two teaspoons at the most.

[02:49] Here they are at half an hour. I can feel on my spoon. They're not done yet. I'll certainly need more water or the pot will dry out and burn. Not an ad if it's just what I had on hand. Here we are after an hour of simmering. I taste one. It's just barely too firm, almost done.

[03:07] At this stage, I'm going to kill the heat and ladle off like half of this. I've got good plain beans here that I could use for anything another day. What's left is almost beans in sauce. If the liquid looks a little too thin at this stage, that's okay. The cheese is going to thicken it.

[03:25] If there's a lot more liquid than this, I would pour some off or simmer the beans a little while to thicken. Now real quick, I'm going to cut a broccoli crown into small pieces. I'm sure that catch you, I pepe purists have already ducked out by now.

[03:40] You could pour some frozen peas right into those beans. I'm going to throw the florets on top, turn the heat back on, cover and steam for the last few minutes while the beans finish. Oh hey, my perennial sage bush is blooming again. Yoink, this is totally extra, but I think it might be nice to have a garnish to sprinkle over some green leaves of any herb, a clove of garlic, peeled.

[04:04] That would be enough right there, but maybe a chili if you have one, maybe some lemon zest if you have one already. Chop that stuff up super fine into itself. It's amazing what happens when you do that. At the very least, the flavors mix really well. I want more sage.

[04:20] But beyond that, I wonder if there aren't some reactions happening between flavors, resulting in new compounds, as fine as you can reasonably get it. After like five more minutes, I can check my broccoli with a fork, almost tender enough. I'll let it coast the rest of the way, heat off.

[04:36] All there is to do now is grate in a huge pile of parmesan or pecorino cheese. I generally prefer pecorino in all things. It's the sheep's milk equivalent of parmesan. And then a whole ton of freshly ground black pepper. That's it. Stir to make the sauce come together. If it's too thin, you could add more cheese or smash up some of the beans or simmer this a little bit more, but don't boil it hard or the cheese might go gritty.

[05:02] Give it a taste. Perfect. Beans are a little gritty for me. I normally pay a little extra for better fresher dried beans. You do get better texture with those. It's worth trying that if you think you don't like beans.

[05:15] Sprinkle that garnish on there. And only because I have them, I can put on some of these edible sage flowers. You want to pluck the petals right out of the green calyx there. Oh, how pretty. Again, only because I have them right in front of me.

[05:29] This is darn tasty and pretty healthy. And I look forward to trying more classic pasta flavors with beans, sexy beans.