Beef brisket goes especially well with red beans and rice. Whether you serve it on the side or recook it with the beans, it'll make your taste buds happy! To balance out the strong savory flavors, pair the meal with collard greens, coleslaw, or corn on the cob.
Rice and beans is often thought of as a side dish to a Mexican meal. But the truth is that rice and beans is a powerful, healthy combo. Together they make a complete protein! Which means that you don't always need animal protein with your meal in order to feel full.
Rice is rich in starch, an excellent source of energy. Rice also has iron and some protein. Beans also contain a good amount of iron and a greater amount of protein than rice. Together they make up a complete protein, which provides large quantities of each of the amino acids the body cannot make for itself.
The high satiety factors of rice and beans can help you lose weight or stay at a healthy weight over time. Satiety measures how satisfying a food is to eat and how long it keeps you full. Satiety is vital in maintaining a healthy weight.
Gallopinto, the rice-and-beans combination, is known by many names across Latin America, some charming like casamiento (wedding) others rather dated and decidedly politically incorrect like moros y cristianos (Moors and Christians).
Adding a cup of beans to your daily diet is one of the cheapest, easiest and tastiest ways to lower cholesterol and blood sugar levels and boost good gut bacteria.
The Maine bean suppah: a tradition dating back centuries, bringing families, communities and church groups together for a communal dinner featuring the little legume we call beans. The roots of this meal pre-date Maine itself.
Beans are a great way to get low-fat, low-calorie protein that already has the fiber and carbs mixed in. A single cup has around 15 grams. That's two to three times more than rice or wheat. It's especially good for a protein building block called lysine that you might not get enough of if you're a vegetarian.
You can include all kinds of veggies like fresh corn, steamed broccoli, green beans, and others. Baked beans go well with crisp-tender stir-fried veggies like carrots, bell peppers, cabbage, and celery for a healthier alternative to fried food.
Complementary Proteins
However, beans have the amino acids that rice lacks, and vice versa. So when you eat a plate of rice and beans, you get all the essential amino acids. In fact, you don't even have to eat beans and rice in the same meal; just eat them during the same day.
One of the benefits of eating beans and rice together is that they contain all of the essential amino acids and make a complete protein. Individually, beans and rice are low in certain types of essential amino acids, but together, each offers what the other lacks, per the American Heart Association.
Soaking dried beans before cooking lowers their potassium level in a big way. Try it with chickpeas and lentils as well! Soak them for 12 hours, then boil them or cook them in your pressure cooker or on the stove.
Although you can technically eat beans straight out of the can, even low-sodium varieties can be quite salty, so it's a good idea to drain and rinse them before eating them or cooking with them (unless a recipe specifically says otherwise).
Unless the recipe tells you to keep the canned beans in their liquid, you should drain your can and give the beans a good rinse before using. This will improve the flavor and texture of your finished dish.
Nutrition-wise, cooked and canned are about the same, but the sodium content of canned beans can be 100 times that of cooked. Draining and rinsing the canned beans can get rid of about half the sodium, but you're also draining and rinsing away some of the nutrition.
Baked beans can be healthy as part of a balanced diet — but there are important things to note. Baked beans found in cans, such as Heinz, contain added salt and sugar that are a significant amount of the recommended daily intake.
In fact, in Central America, the pairing of beans and rice is often called Matrimonio “the marriage” because their union is so perfect; so perfect, that when eaten together, beans and rice contain all nine essential amino acids to form a complete source of protein.
Rice and beans are also popular in other Central American countries like Costa Rice where gallo pinto, rice with beans, with a side of eggs is a popular option for breakfast.
Red beans and rice became a traditional dish on Mondays in New Orleans because it made use of the ham bone left over from Sunday dinner. Monday was typically wash day, and the beans could be simmered for a long time on the back of the stove while the laundry was being done.