Day Ten: Red Beans with Andouille Sausage

Day ten of Operation: Expand Horizons brought a simple dish from the minions over at Martha Stewart Omnimedia: Everyday Food's Red Beans with Andouille Sausage. This one is completely idiot-proof, cheap, filling, and weeknight simple.

Recipes from Everyday Food have shown themselves to often be quite bland, so from the start, I made a modification to the recipe. It calls for adding the sausage to the beans after they are cooked- I left it in while the beans simmered to add flavor.

Don't skip the important overnight soak of the dried beans. I'm glad I looked through the soaked and drained beans instead of just dumping them into the pot- there were several dozen "rogue beans" that had not benefited from the soak and looked as though they hadn't been in water at all. I picked them all out. Who wants random hard, undercooked beans ruining the pot of deliciousness?

I served the red beans and sausage over plain white rice, and we had cornbread and iced tea on the side to round out a fine Southern meal.

Properly soaked beans on the left; rogue beans on the right. Remove them and discard.