Kuru Fasulye

The beans start in cold unsalted water and the salt goes in only once they are soft.

Lamb. Not vegetarian — contains lamb.

Ingredients

• 500 g dried white beans, soaked overnight
• 150 g pastırma, sliced, or 200 g lamb, diced
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons tomato purée
• 1 tablespoon hot red pepper paste
• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 long green peppers, chopped
• 1.2 litres hot water
• 2 teaspoons Aleppo pepper flakes
• salt and black pepper

Method

1. THE BEANS START IN COLD UNSALTED WATER AND THE SALT GOES IN ONLY ONCE THEY ARE SOFT. Salt and acid both firm a bean's skin, and a bean whose skin has set cannot take up water however long it boils -- so salted at the start, or cooked in the tomato from the beginning, they will sit there stubbornly chalky for two hours and never come good. They go in with plain hot water, simmered until a bean crushes easily against the roof of the mouth, and only then are the tomato purée, pepper paste and salt added. Getting this the wrong way round is the single reason this dish fails, and it fails irreversibly.
2. THE SOAKING WATER IS THROWN AWAY. Twelve hours in cold water, then drained and rinsed. The water that comes off carries the indigestible sugars and it is discarded, not cooked in.
3. THE PASTIRMA GOES IN NEAR THE END, NOT AT THE START. Sliced and added for the last fifteen minutes. It is already cured and intensely seasoned; simmered for an hour it gives all of that to the pot and becomes grey and leathery, where fifteen minutes warms it through and leaves it still itself.
4. IT IS COOKED WITH A GREAT DEAL OF OLIVE OIL AND THAT IS NOT A GARNISH. Five tablespoons. The oil emulsifies with the starch the beans release and that is what makes the liquid thick and glossy rather than watery -- there is no flour and no other thickening anywhere in the dish.
5. SOME OF THE BEANS ARE CRUSHED AGAINST THE SIDE OF THE POT. A dozen or so, pressed with the back of the spoon near the end. Their starch thickens the liquid further. The alternative, cooking it down, overcooks the beans that are still whole.
6. THE LIQUID SHOULD JUST COVER AND NO MORE. Beans need room but not a swimming pool; too much water and the finished dish is soup. Topped up with hot water as needed rather than started with a surplus.
7. The beans SOAKED 12 HOURS in cold water, then DRAINED and RINSED, and the soaking water thrown away.
8. The beans put in a pot with the 1.2 litres of HOT water -- NO salt, NO tomato -- and simmered 50 to 70 MINUTES.
9. Cooked until a bean CRUSHES EASILY against the roof of the mouth. Topped up with hot water if needed.
10. Meanwhile the olive oil heated in a second pan and the onions softened 10 MINUTES.
11. The green peppers in for 5 MINUTES, then the tomato purée and pepper paste fried 2 MINUTES until darkened.
12. ONLY NOW: the onion mixture and the SALT stirred into the soft beans.
13. Simmered together 20 MINUTES.
14. The pastırma laid in for the last 15 MINUTES.
15. A dozen beans CRUSHED against the side of the pot with the spoon to thicken the liquid.
16. TESTED: the beans should be creamy through and the liquid glossy and just coating them. Chalky centres mean salt or tomato went in too early.
17. Scattered with Aleppo pepper and black pepper.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes