When you visit Costa Rica one meal you are sure to have is Gallo Pinto. This is simply a combination of rice and beans which can be served with fried fish, chicken, pork or beef. It is also very commonly served for breakfast with fried eggs. The people in Costa Rica love this food! I’ve eaten this in restaurants and diners many times so I decided to try cooking my own beans.
To make Gallo Pinto I needed to buy Tio Pelon Frijoles Negros Black Beans in the local supermarket. A bag of 900 grams was the smallest bag I could find. The cost was around 950 colones, around $2US. I put them in a pan and soaked them in water overnight. I was amazed at how much they expanded! They must have tripled in size.
Next I rinsed them and put them into the biggest pot that I had and filled it with water. I brought it to boil and let it simmer. Some people say two hours of simmering is enough, others say you should leave it simmering gently all day (and keep adding water). I decided that three and a half hours would be enough for me.
Once the beans were simmering I added a few extra ingredients:
2 chopped garlic cloves
1 chopped onion
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon garlic salt
½ teaspoon Italian Seasoning
2 tablespoons of Tabasco Sauce
2 tablespoons of Lizano Sauce
2 vegetable or chicken broth cubes
1 dried bay leaf
You can also add cilantro if you have any. So I let that simmer away, stirring occasionally. Three hours later I put rice in my rice cooker and started to prepare the rest of my meal. Usually I would stir fry some chicken or chorizo but today I decided to have a vegetarian meal. I replaced meat with plantain. So I fried onion, garlic, tomato and plantain.
Once the rice was ready and the beans had cooked for three and a half hours, it was time to eat! I was really happy with the outcome. It was a tasty meal and quite healthy although it was washed down with a bottle of local beer Imperial! That 900 gram bag produced a huge amount of beans, in fact I have ten portions put into containers and stored in my freezer!
Usually for Gallo Pinto you would sauté the rice and beans together after they are cooked, but I decided to keep them separate. So this is really called ‘Casado’, which also means ‘married’ in Spanish.
