Basic White Beans

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

This is a simple side dish, albeit one that takes four hours of simmering on the stovetop. The beans (I used great northern beans) are cooked until tender with an onion, a couple of whole cloves, a couple of carrots, a stalk of celery, some rosemary and a bay leaf. If you have any parmesan rinds, you can also throw one of those in. Finamore doesn’t have you soak the beans first; he says the texture is better without soaking. I just liked that I didn’t have to plan too far in advance to make these.

As a side dish, these are, well, beans. Straightforward and simple. The cloves add an unusual flavor that I thought was okay, but Bryan didn’t really like. Finamore gets some mileage out of this recipe, using the beans to make a soup and a baked pasta dish. He also says the beans freeze really well.