The Slow Cooker: My Maiden Voyage

 I'd heard that a great tool for cutting your food costs is using a slow cooker. Actually, I'd heard lots of good things about slow cookers - and they sound pretty tempting to a busy mom: Prep your food the night before, turn the slow cooker on in the morning, come home at night to a lovely-smelling home and a freshly prepared hot and delicious meal the whole family will love. Who says we can't do it all? Not the fine folks at Crock Pot!

Counter space is precious in our NYC apartment, so I don't have a slow cooker. Luckily, one of my dear friends does, and was willing to loan it to me for Cut Back Month (perhaps an indicator of how useful a slow cooker ACTUALLY is?). She is also doing the Paleo diet (you go, girl!) so she gave me a few packages of heirloom beans. CBM score! Free food. And I didn't have to dumpster dive. She gave me a pound of Cannellini Beans and a pound of Midnight Black Beans. Don't they sound divine? She also mentioned that dried beans cooked in a slow cooker taste amazing - creamy and delicious.

I'd previously experimented a little bit with dried beans because they do cost so much less than canned (and are also way easier to transport - and important factor when one carries their groceries home as we do in NYC), but had little luck. It seems like such a process - the soaking, the cooking, the preparation, and they always seemed to be a *wee* bit underdone...when it takes two seconds to open a can of beans and add them to virtually any dish. Perhaps this is a key learning of Cut Back Month - a little preparation will save you lots of money.

Anyway, I decided to make smokey barbecue baked beans in the slow cooker, and adapted my own recipe from these two: Lima Bean Cassoulet from A Year of Slow Cooking (great blog) and Hot and Smokey Baked Beans from Smitten Kitchen (amazing blog). I'd made the Smitten Kitchen recipe before in the oven, and they turned out delicious, so I'm excited to taste the slow cooker results with the heirloom beans. Here's my official recipe:

1 pound dried beans
1 28 ounce can diced tomatoes
2 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 cup pork sausage, cooked and crumbled
1/4 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 chipotle pepper canned - (optional, and I only used 1/2 because Charlotte will hopefully eat these. If I were cooking for Jeff and myself, I would have used probably 3 or 4 peppers, chopped - we like it hot!)
1 cup water
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons barbecue sauce
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
2 teaspoons worcestershire sauce
black pepper

Soak the beans overnight in water, discard water. Pre-cook the meats. Add all ingredients to the slow cooker. Cook for 7 hours on low.

Cost Breakdown
I'm doing two costs here - one what it cost me, and one what it would cost if you purchased everything. All prices are co-op prices. Obviously (as with all recipes!) if you went vegetarian the cost would be reduced significantly.

MY COST
Beans - free from my Paleo diet friend
Tomatoes - around $2.50 from the co-op
Bacon - $6.50 per pack - $1.70 for two slices
Sausage - free from my mother (South Dakota sausage, had been taking up space in my freezer)
Misc ingredients and spices - under $5
Approximately $8 for the entire dish - I'd estimate there are at least ten generous servings in there, so 80 cents per serving. Not bad, especially when you calculate that buying a sandwich for lunch at a deli will run you $8.

PURCHASE COST
Beans - $5.50
Tomatoes - $2.50
Bacon - $1.70
Sausage - $7.50 for full package, I used half = $3.75
Misc - under $5
Approximately $17.50 for the entire dish. Still not too shabby at a price of $1.75 per serving. What can you get for $1.75? A cup of coffee? Maybe.(And you could of course lower the cost by forgoing the heirloom beans and eliminating the meat.)

Soooooo, what's the verdict you ask?

Meh.

I know I know, we had such high expectations. The house smelled amazing, it all looked so delish...but dried beans are apparently my kryptonite. 92% of the heirloom beans are cooked to perfection: creamy and velvety, melt-in-your-mouth delicious with extraordinary flavor - truly I can tell a difference in the heirloom variety - their flavor is like somehow magnified. Unfortunately 8% are undercooked. And I cooked those suckers for 10 hours on low, put it in the fridge overnight, then cooked it for another hour on high the next day. Still, every 5th bite contains an undercooked bean. Sigh. Perhaps I should have soaked them longer? (Longer than 8 hours overnight, I ask you?). The flavor of the dish is divine, highly recommended. Alas, the texture of the beans foils me again.