Vegan Red Beans and Rice

An okay dish. I needed something to serve a vegan guest, and this worked. In spite of all the spices, it was surprisingly bland. If I make it again, I would probably at least double them. I didn't have any liquid smoke, so maybe that was part of the problem (otherwise I'd say it earned three stars - but I'm sure it would taste better with the liquid smoke). I did like the consistency. I didn't drain any water, and it was a little gooey without being soupy. In retrospect, it would have been good with fresh-baked bread on the side.

Really good. I like to use vegetable broth with beans to round out flavor so used half water and half broth. YUM.

Cracks me up that the prep time is given as "10 mins." Taste profile is NOLA authentic. Sauciness not an issue for me, but using raw beans necessitated cooking much longer than 2-3 hours to achieve desired tenderness. I was surprised that originator did not factor in the tenderizing capacity of salt by including it from the start; I ended up using about 1 teaspoon total and added it during the simmer. Also, no meat made the finished product lack umami; my solution was to add one tsp. of wine vinegar, 1 Tbsp. of Worcestershire Sauce, and 1 tsp of a granular vegetarian Umami additive available at Trader Joe's. (One final note - cooking rice at 2:1 ratio of water to grain makes for a mushy result, so I usually go for a 1:1 ratio or add just a bit more water to achieve the desired separation of grains. I will likely make this recipe again. It was easy to follow, well-documented, and yields a delicious result.