Get a pressure cooker, it makes beans far more practical.

A staple for me is to sautee some garlic and chopped onion in chicken fat or olive oil in a pressure cooker, add bay leaves, black pepper, a small pile of cumin and an even larger pile of paprika, and some parsley, with the (salted)water+beans. I'll usually do this with black beans supplemented with ~20% pinto.

Augment it for other bean types... just look up recipes for what herbs/spices goes well with them. Cumin and paprika works with a lot of them, heavier cumin with lentils, heavier paprika with kidney beans. Garbonzo I usually leave out the cumin and paprika altogether, and add rosemary.

Kidney beans you can turn into a sort of poor man's vegan chili just by adding a mountain of paprika, it turns into a sauce with the disintegrating beans. I'll omit the onions, garlic, and bay leaves for that mode, and just add some raw chopped onions to the bowl like you would with chili.

I cook a ton of beans and the recipe is always:

Pick a meat and cook it (dice up sausage links, ground meat/turkey, cooked bacon diced up, boil and shredded chicken breast, etc)

Use oil from meat or olive oil to saute diced veggies (onion, garlic, peppers, mushrooms, corn)

Deglaze with some liquid (beef, chicken, veggie broth) that matches the meat you cooked.

Pick a seasoning or make your own blend (chili, taco, ranch, curry), be sure to taste the broth before adding the seasoning or it might end up crazy salty if you picked a salty meat/liquid

Pick a bean (or a few) and throw it in (red kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans).

Throw the lid on and cook on low for like 30 mins.

Add fixings: hot sauce, bed of rice, Greek yogurt, shredded cheese, tortilla chips, avocado slices, whatever.

If you're using dry beans just get an instant pot. It's worth the money.

For the lazy man: cut up 2 sausage links, fry them up in dutch oven, toss in 2 cans pinto beans, 2 cans Rotel. Throw the lid on and cook slow for 30 minutes. Add salt or seasonings to taste.

Typically I will cook a base of beans and diced tomatoes in a big pot and scoop out what I need through the week to make different things. If you end up with too many leftover just mash them like potatoes and make dips or spread it on tortillas with some scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Look up almost any Indian recipe with lentils/legumes/pulses.

You can also sprout moong beans by soaking them in water overnight, draining them in the morning, and leaving them covered with a damp cloth in a dark area like the microwave for 24 to 48 hours.

Once sprouted to your desired level, you can just eat them, or make a sprouted moong bean salad with bell pepper, cucumber, tomato, lemon juice, black pepper, and salt.

Mujaddara is middle eastern lentils and rice. The rice makes it a complete protein. I modified this recipe https://feelgoodfoodie.net/recipe/mujadara/ and cook it all in a rice cooker at the same time. Delicious.

Feijoada. 2 cups black beans, four cups broth, 4 oz fatty pork scraps (bacon, shoulder, whatever), 8 oz sausage, whatever other meat scraps are laying around, 2 onions chopped, 2 bell peppers chopped, 6 cloves garlic, tsp oregano, tsp black pepper. High pressure 2 hours. Unlid, correct seasoning, eat with rice.

Real minestrone is a bean-and-cabbage stew, and made properly it's one of the best things. Fry 3 oz bacon in pressure cooker saute. Add 2 ribs celery chopped, 1 carrot chopped, 2 onions chopped, fry until softened. Add 6 cloves garlic, 8 cups broth, a Parmesean rind (about 5x2"), a bay leaf, and 1 cup small white beans (cannellini). High Pressure 2 hours. Meanwhile, fry a sliced zucchini in some olive oil. Reserve. Then fry half a cabbage chopped up in some more olive oil. Add the fried veg to the finished bean soup, then add 1.5 cups V-8 and a big fistful of chopped basil. Stir it up. Correct seasoning with salt and red pepper. Eat it, maybe with some more parmesean. DON'T THROW AWAY THE STEWED CHEESE RIND IT IS DELICIOUS.

You can do some other weird stuff, like make an egg salad-style salad with chickpeas, but that's some weird stuff that I think takes a bit more adventurousness in the mouth.

I coould go on, but those are some good starters. I cook a lot.

Puerto Rican style stewed beans: https://thenoshery.com/habichuelas-guisadas-pink-beans-in-to...

- Dal tadka (pigeon pea, mung bean, and chickpea stew)

- Dal makhani (creamy, buttery black bean stew, similar texture to frijoles refritos)

- Rajma masala (creamy red bean stew)

- Sambar or bisi bēle bhāt, for a more luxurious version (pigeon pea and vegetable stew; the latter is a pretty involved version that is mixed with rice to produce a very rich rice dish)

- Masoor dal pulao

- Adai (legume and rice crepes, similar to but more savoury than dosais)

- Vada (legume and rice fritters)

We eat a lot of beans now, and cook meat at home 1-2 times a month. A staple in my household is instapot black beans: https://www.seriouseats.com/quick-and-easy-pressure-cooker-b...

Bean tacos one night, beans and rice the next, kid never says no to more beans and rice for lunch.

We make hummus, started from NYT Cooking but more garlic. Pretty easy to make a big batch and freeze half. Hummus is great in sandwich form.

And I second any Indian recipes with lentils, etc. though I haven't found the ones that the kids consistently like. Dal is easy, but even I don't love it.

I live in Texas and my wife is from Northern Mexico. This is a classic, extremely easy, 5 minute refried beans recipe:

- 1 can of pinto beans, already cooked

- 1 heaping tbsp of lard (olive oil can be substituted if you are vegan or vegetarian)

- salt to taste. We almost never salt the beans because we eat them with other fairly heavily salted foods, but it depends on how you cook obviously.

Open can, empty about the top 1/8 of liquid from the can. Again this is to personal preference, but usually using all of the liquid from the can in the saucepan results in too runny beans.

Bring beans to boil in saucepan with the liquid from the can. Once beans are boiling, add lard/oil and simmer on medium low heat until lard has completely melted or oil has dispersed.

Stir and mash beans. We use a potato masher in our house. Very low tech. I’ve even used the back of a spoon in a pinch, but it’s a bit of a pain to do that.

Serve hot. The longer you wait the thicker the beans become. So if they come out a little runny just wait a little while and let them cool, they will thicken. The only thing that can save completely watery beans is more beans, however.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023371-sheet-pan-feta-w... - I like this one a lot during the winter.

For a weeks worth of lunches:

1. Pot of quinoa

2. 2 bunches of kale, torn up and steamed on top of the quinoa while it finishes cooking.

3. Stir in a can of pinto beans

4. Add a couple of shredded carrots

5. Pour in however much dressing you want. I use some store-bought Green Goddess flavored stuff.

Beans and rice, it's inexpensive and delicious. If you look at food all around the world there is almost always some kind of beans and rice dish, typically made with spices and vegetables unique to the area.

It's very inexpensive, filling and easy to cook in bulk and freeze/reheat throughout the week. Most of my lunches during the week are pinto or black beans I pressure cook once a week plus some rice I cook a few times a week.

YouTube videos. Language may become an issue for you. If it does, please feel free to ask, I'll reply at leisure. The second video uses sprouts, but it works as well with any pre-boiled beans.

[0] https://youtu.be/asY7cq6j0xE [1] https://youtu.be/SNDrDZs3nn4

Does tofu count? Lots of great recipes. We frequently make Mapo tofu at home (which can be made vegan if you want, and pretty easy to cook - just buy a jar of Doubanjiang(?) at your nearest Chinese grocery).

Or if you feel really lazy, slice tofu into bite-size, and place a slice of kimchi on top of each. A bit like spicy Caprese.

beans with beans