Crockpot Beans

This is a great recipe to make on Monday and incorporate into several different meals through the week.  This recipe will easily work for bean burritos, beans and cornbread, chili with beans, enchiladas with refried beans, etc.  While the basic recipe calls for pinto beans, you can sub in any dried bean.  Red kidney beans, white northern beans, and black beans all work wonderfully!  I often mix the beans, too, to get some nutritional variation.

Dried beans are cheap, healthy, versatile, and super tasty, so this is a good recipe to keep in your natural eating arsenal!
Ingredients

• 3 cups dried beans
• 2 quarts liquid (any combination of water and stock will work, but I usually do half water & half chicken stock)
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons oregano
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon salt (or to taste, depending on the saltiness of your cooking liquid)

Directions

1.  Wash the beans thoroughly.  Rather than pouring back-and-forth between a bowl and the colander, I just set the colander in a big bowl of water and let the beans soak for about 5 minutes.  Once the dirt is loosened, I remove the colander (and beans) and empty the water.  Repeat until the water is clear (usually 2 or 3 rounds).

2.  Place all of the ingredients in a crockpot, stir once, and cook on high for 7 hours.  There's no need to stir throughout the day and no need to even check on them (unless your crockpot requires attention for some reason).
That is it!  I told you it'd be easy.  Some people advocate soaking your beans overnight before you cook them, but I think this just requires unneeded time and effort.  I never soak mine, and my beans turn out great every time!