I am finding that having a new gadget in the kitchen, I am of course referring to my Redmond Multicooker, is very inspiring when it comes to the creation of new recipes.

Cooking in a multicooker is easy so long as you follow the recipe, use the correct cooking program and time schedule that are provided. However when it comes to creating a brand new recipe things can get a bit tricky… it is a prime example of trial and error at the beginning but once you are experienced in the use of it, things get a lot easier.

Yesterday we decided to experiment a little. We love BBQ and all things smoked, so the plan was to adapt our favourite Smoked Beans recipe to be suitable for the multicooker as we didn’t really want the hassle of starting the BBQ.

Smoked Beans are delicious and we very often use our outdoor smoker the whole year round but sometimes you really just want something fairly quick and easy and cooking in a multicooker couldn’t be easier. The compromise is of course the loss of the actual real life smoky taste and thus we would be achieving flavour heaven by a subtle mix of ingredients 🙂

Ingredients:

• 250g smoked bacon
• 250g precooked meat (best way to use leftovers!) or sausages as your fall-back
• 1 white onion
• 1 red onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• Small piece of ginger
• 1 tin of cannellini beans
• 1 tin of red kidney beans
• 50g dark brown sugar
• 4tbsp ketchup
• 4tbsp BBQ sauce
• 2tbsp molasses
• 2tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1tbsp Dijon ready-made mustard
• 1tbsp cider vinegar
• 1tsp smoked sweet paprika
• 1/2tsp dry mustard
• 1/2tsp salt
• 1/2tsp fresh ground pepper
• 1/2tsp cayenne pepper
• 1/2tsp dry chilli flakes (optional if you fancy more heat)
• 250ml beer (preferably a real ale sort of beer)

Method:

Chop the bacon into small chunks.

Cut the meat or sausage (or both) into chunks as well and set aside. We also used two packs of pork ham and cut it into thick strips.

Peel and finely chop onions.

Mince garlic and ginger.

Drain and rinse both cans of beans.

Pre-set your multicooker to Fry (we set fry vegetables) and set time to 6 minutes.

Pop bacon into your multicooker and press start.

The machine will take 3 minutes to heat up and get into ideal frying temperature.

Once the timer starts going down and you see number change to 5, pop the lid open and swiftly add onions, garlic and ginger; stir well, close the lid and let the frying program finish.

Now when the frying stage is done it is time to add everything else. Pop all your remaining ingredients into your multicooker including the beer, stir well and close the lid.

Set multicooker to Stew and set time to 1 hour 30 minutes.

Nothing is going to burn or stick, so you can just let it cook and relax.

When the time is up, you are ready to eat.

Enjoy!

Do you like beans?

What’s your favourite beans recipe?

*Recipe commissioned by Redmond.