Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice

In (belated) celebration of Fat Tuesday, here's my slow cooker red beans and rice recipe. It is very similar to the Caribbean black beans and rice I described yesterday. This is an example of minor changes to the flavor profile of a recipe giving very different results.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• How to make Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice
• Variations
• Tools
• Notes
• Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice Recipe
• Inspired By
• 💬 Comments

(Note: I found out about slow cookers and red kidney bean poisoning after I originally posted this recipe. That's why I added the "bring to a boil" step before putting the beans in the slow cooker; it makes the beans safe to cook in a slow cooker. Nowadays I use my Instant Pot for red beans and rice: Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice, so I don't have to worry about slow cookers and beans.)

Ingredients

Slow Cooker Dry Red Kidney Beans

• 1 pound dry red kidney beans, sorted and rinsed
• 1 onion, peeled and halved
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1 bay leaf
• 8 cups water

Red Beans and Rice

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 16oz Andouille sausage, diced (optional, substitute Kielbasa if you can't find Andouille)
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 1 stalk celery, diced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon Cajun seasonings
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme (or 1 sprig fresh thyme)
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce (optional, Frank's Red hot for mild, Tabasco is hotter, and traditional)
• salt and pepper to taste

Serve with

• Basic White Rice
• Tabasco

How to make Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice

Slow Cook the Beans

(Basic Slow Cooker Beans technique here) Put the beans in a pot, cover with 2 inches of water, and bring to a boil. Boil for ten minutes, then drain. Transfer the beans to your slow cooker, and add the rest of the beans ingredient list.  Cook on low for 8 hours. Remove the onion and bay leaf.

Sauté the aromatics

After the beans are cooked, Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large non-stick skillet. Add the andouille, and cook until just starting to brown, 1-2 minutes. Add the onions, pepper and celery, and cook until semi-translucent and just starting to brown, 3-5 minutes. Make a hole in the center of the onion mix and add the garlic and cajun spices. Cook for 1 minute, or until you start to smell the garlic cooking, then stir into the rest of the mix.

Final cooking

Add the aromatics to the crock pot with the beans, and let simmer for 15-30 minutes. Stir in the hot sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. Mash some of the beans with a potato masher to thicken the broth*. (Or whiz them for a few one second pulses with a stick blender - don't over blend. You don't want Cream of Red Bean soup!) Serve over the white rice, with Tabasco on the side.

Variations

• Easy slow cooker version: Don't cook the beans separately from the rest of the ingredients. Do the Sauté the aromatics step first, then move all the sautéed aromatics from the fry pan into a crock pot. Add all the ingredients (except for the onion) from step 1 (slow cook the beans) into the crock pot, and continue with cooking on low for 8 hours. Finally, move on to step 3, adding the hot sauce and salt and pepper to taste.
• Make the beans a day ahead, best version: This recipe tastes best if the beans are made the day before, and allowed to rest in the refrigerator overnight. In the final cooking stage, bring them to a boil before simmering.
• Vegetarian version: Just skip the sausage.
• A little lemon: Add a squeeze of lemon juice, or some lemon zest at the very end, for some acid and citrus flavor.
• Ham hock: For extra flavor in the beans, add a a smoked ham hock to the slow cooker with the beans. When the beans are done, either discard the ham hock, or pull off all the meat you can, shredding it with your fingers, then stir it back into the beans.

Tools

6 quart or larger slow cooker (Crock pot brand is fine; the pictures show my fancy All-Clad slow cooker that I got at their annual sale.)

Notes

• Use a Louisiana style hot sauce, like Tabasco or Crystal. If you can't take that much heat, you can substitute Frank's Red Hot sauce. The flavors don't exactly match a Louisiana style hot sauce, but it is close enough, and Franks has lots of pepper flavor.

Print

Inspired By

• Justin Wilson - "I gar-on-tee!"
• Emeril Lagasse - Louisiana, Real and Rustic cookbook