I {heart} rice and beans! Mostly because they make SUCH cheap meals! Even larger families or families with older children could make a meal with rice and beans that’s less than $5! I encourage everyone to incroporate a rice and beans…or other vegetarian style meal into their weekly meal plan. Just an easy way to save a few bucks each week!
I {heart} my slow cooker! I really, really do! Probably not quite as much as Steph {hearts} hers, but I do love it!
Here’s the sitch…whenever I’m making something “new” in the crockpot, I always stop to see if Steph (aka the Crockpot Lady) has made something similar…and what tips or tricks she might have! So I stopped by here this morning…because I’ve not made rice and beans in the slow cooker before…and of course, she had! I wanted to do black beans and rice with diced tomatoes…and her recipe was pretty similar! I learned that the rice would cook faster than I thought, so I didn’t start this until just before lunch!
Here’s my version.
Slow Cooker Black Beans and Rice
Ingredients
- 1 cup black beans
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 cup brown rice
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 15 oz can diced tomatoes
- 1 tsp 1 tsp ground cumin
- Salt/Pepper
- 3 corn cobs
Instructions
- Cook soaked beans for an hour in a saucepan with at least 2 inches of water over the beans. (I prefer to cook my beans before adding them to the slow cooker. You can certainly cook them in the slow cooker...details here!)
- Soak beans overnight in water. In the morning, drain and rinse.
- Place olive oil into slow cooker. Stir rice around in the olive oil. Add cooked black beans (substitute 2 15 oz. cans), diced tomatoes, garlic cloves, ground cumin, salt and pepper AND 2 cups of water.
- Set on high for 6 hours. I set mine for 6 hours because I used brown rice. If you use white rice, set it for 4 hours.
- Boil corn in large saucepan for 4-5 minutes. Serve with butter, if you like.
- Serve Slow Cooker Black Beans and Rice with Corn Cobs.
- This would be DELICIOUS topped with some Monterrey jack cheese...or even cheddar. Since we're dairy-free, I didn't...but think that would be delish!
(It doesn’t get much cheaper than that y’all!)
AmandaonMaui says
You could slice the corn off the cobs and mix it in near the end of the cooking time. Just let it cook up a little and it’ll add some nice color and flavor to the dish. Add in chili powder and a dash of cayenne pepper to give it extra flare, and top with sour cream (or soy sour cream or plain yogurt) for a bit of coolness. Slice chopped green onions over the top.
Make it Indian by using Indian spices in place of the current spices and serve with a little raita on top instead of sour cream.
So many things to do with beans and rice.
Tomk says
couldn’t agree more with your conclusion…………..!!!
crockpot lady says
yay! I’m glad this worked out so well for you!
my kids eat their weight in beans and rice, which is always wonderful.
have a safe trip. xoxo steph
LuAnn says
This sounds great! I think a slow cooker/crockpot is going to be my housewarming gift to me! 🙂
Shelly says
You can freeze all that corn. I freeze it from my garden every year. I wrap each ear in saran wrap and then put them into ziplock freezer bags. Then I just drop them into boiling water right from the freezer for a few minutes and they are as good as they were the day we picked them. My MIL freezes her’s still in the husk then shucks it when ready to use. I like them ready to go at the last minute so I always shuck them first.
You probably already know this but thought I’d share it anyway.
Erin says
Thanks for that tip…that will likely be what happens to them!!!
Karen says
Actually if you have alot of corn, you can probably make modified version of yummy corn chowder. IT uses chese and veggies. ITs really quite delicious!
fairydust says
I love the sound of this recipe, but the last time I put rice in a recipe in the crockpot, I ended up with a pretty gluey mass of starch, not nice happy individual cooked rice grains floating around in sauce like I was expecting. It was still very tasty but not at all like what I expected (not, for example, like the photo above). Is there some trick to getting rice to not soak up all the liquid and overcook?
Karen says
I made a dish similar to this. I liked mine because it didn’t require the beans to be soaked overnight. Just throw them in the crockpot the day of…easy peasy.
http://365daysofcrockpot.blogspot.com/2009/06/day-139-cuban-black-beans-and-rice.html
Christina Baita says
Hello Erin. I am so glad to see you are adding GF stuff to your blog. I just wish it wasn’t because you had to. I am doing GF for fibromyalgia and can tell a difference when I eat gluten.
A week+ ago, I bought some GF bread at WF and paid more than $4 for one loaf that is not too appetizing and still in my fridge. When I got home, I got out a GF cookbook and made baguettes mostly of corn starch. They had a great texture and good taste. With some peanut butter and banana slices on slices, my son loved it! I even just used a “regular” recipe on some Bob’s apple and cinnamon granola and replaced the flours in the recipe with different GF flours and they came out very tasty. I will blog about it tommorrow.
I hope that you have a great time in San Antonio and make it to the walk.
Emily says
is there some water or other liquid missing? i’m trying this with canned beans, not brave enough to try dried yet 8) but it doesn’t look like there’s enough moisture for the rice to absorb anything. Chicken stock? water? thank you
I’m trying to sneak in meatless meals here and there.
Erin says
Oh Mah word! Thanks Emily! I forgot to add the “add 2 cups of water” into the directions. I don’t normally list water as an ingredient, so when I doubled checked the ingredients with the directions, I left it out! Thanks!!!
Anonymous says
If you add a spoon of regular yogurt to your soaking beans you will be less gassy after eating them
Tonya says
Beans cause gas because there are large sugar chains in them that are hard for us to digest. These chains pass into the large intestine instead of being absorbed by the small intestine and they are devoured by methane-producing bacteria in our colons. The options to reduce gas: eat beans more often so your digestive system can adjust and use these tough sugars and chew more thoroughly to help the digestive process. The theories that eating yogurt, papaya seeds, okra and various other things are incidental. Experimentation led to more consumption of beans.
acadian says
If you cook beans with garlic you will not have the methane (gas) problems. I cut a whole garlic head in half (I do not remove the outside) and place both halves into the pot of beans as they cook. When the beans are done I throw away the garlic head. If you want more garlic flavor you can mash them into your beans.
Fairy Dust says
delicious! but once again, the rice filled the pot and took up all the liquid (and I put in more than the 2 cups water). I just don’t quite get it – maybe it’s the rice I’m using. LOL!
Kyle says
Are you, by any chance, using minute rice. I’ve definitely made that mistake before.
Nicole says
LOVED this recipe. Had a similar issue to other posters with the rice- I ended up calling it “black beans and mush” 🙂 but it still TASTED fantastic!
I had a similar thought to first poster re: adding the corn to the beans and rice! I have not yet seen corn that cheap in CO, 25 cents an ear is as cheap as it’s gotten, and I wasn’t in the mood for corn that week!
Gwenn says
Fairy Dust:
Mine came out like that too. Tasted great (added 1/2 tsp chili powder & 1/2 can of corn) but I was hoping to use leftovers in burritos later this week but i”m pretty sure hubby is going to whine about the mushy rice. Next time I just won’t do it in the crock pot. Just on the stove top.
Shannon says
Cook the rice on the stove and add it in at the last minute. I hate mushy rice so I never cook it in the crockpot.
Shannon says
sounds quick, easy, and yummy!
Susan says
Guess I should have read all the comments before trying to make this. 🙂 2 hours into the cooking I checked and it was very very dry, crunchy, and sticking to the sides of the pot. I added some water at that point and it came out OK in the end but very mushy/goopy. The flavor was good though. I’d try it again and add the water at the beginning and cook for WAY less than 6 hours.
Candy says
This was a great basic recipe, but we tweaked it a little and were happy with the results; omitted the garlic, s &p and cumin and threw in two packages of Goya Sazon ( whichever blend you prefer), chopped green pepper, sweet onion and about 3/4 lb. of smoked turkey sausage, sliced. We used brown rice and dry black beans ( not presoaked) and it was ready to go after 4 hours on low.
john says
substituting 10 oz of red wine for some of the water. 10 oz wine, 6 oz water would make this a nutrition power house. not that it really needs any other tweeking. just an idea
Nicki says
Are you adding in cooked brown rice or uncooked? Also are you using instant or regular? For those of you cooking the rice on the stove and adding it last minute are you just omitting the 2 cups of water from the slow cooker?
Selena says
I’m trying this recipe now and hoping it doesn’t turn out too mushy. I also wanted to know… if next time I don’t want to cook the beans for an hour first (like you do) how much of the crockpot time on the page you linked to do you add on so the beans cook first? It says 8 hours on low to cook the beans. But does 6 hours on high with the rest of your ingredients equal enough time or would I need to do a certain number of hours with just the beans first??
Tabitha says
tried this today my kids loved it i added corn into the crock pot and no tomatoes instead used puree i didnt realize we were out of diced but came out really good.
Barbara Walker says
How many servings does this make? 4-6, 6-8?
liz says
if you have an abundance of corn you can always freeze it in ziploc bags. you don’t even need to blanch. it lasts well into a year i found.
oh and thanks for recipe. i am a purist when it comes to trying not to use the stove top for anything. so i am gonna use one small slow cooker for the rice and the other one for the beans etc.
Kirstin says
I had already started putting things in the crock pot when I realized we were out of canned tomatoes. Instead i used the 1/2 tomato we had left, the remainder of our salsa (about 1/8 cup), and some tapatio sauce to give it a little zip. I also added half a can of corn since we had some in the fridge that needed to get used.
I noticed the white rice started to get mushy around 3 hours, so I stopped cooking it at that point. It probably would have done better at 2 or 2 1/2 hours on high (or maybe 4 hours on low?)
Despite the mushy rice, this was a very delicious meal! (Made me pretty thirsty though, must have been the sodium in the canned beans)
Courtney says
Do you know the best way to save this for leftovers and reheat it? Or is it not good reheated? I want to make a batch to last a whole weeks worth of dinners.
Angie says
Could you add the water into the ingredients list please? I almost missed it!