(Patreon) SoBros Recipe Book: Cold Day Beans

Stoney shares an easy recipe with ingredients you can stash all winter to cook up on a cold winter's day when you don't feel like leaving.

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Welcome into the kitchen at SoBros HQ – we’re takin’ some of our favorite things to make and sharing it with our most loyal readers (that’s you). Simple recipes, for easy, fulfilling dinners and good times galore – that’s our aim with the SoBros Recipe Book.

I don’t know if this is a Southern thing or not, but I’ve grown up on pinto beans. One of my favorite meals during the cold months is just a plain old bowl of pinto beans – there’s a meat-and-three out East of Nashville, in a town called Lebanon, named Snow White Drive-In. They’ll serve you up a bowl of pinto beans that I swear weighs five pounds. You’ll get it with a sliced white onion on top and a couple pieces of cornbread on the side. It is elite. 

You can also get a bowl of pinto beans at the Cracker Barrel too – which…now that I’m slowing down to think about it…maybe this is a southern thing – and if you do, be sure to get the relish with it. Sounds weird, but trust me…it’s good. 

And, that’s the beautiful thing about beans. You can dress ’em up and customize ’em however you want to. After trying a few different things, I landed on this weird recipe for a cold day. I basically said, “hmmm….Nashville hot pinto beans?” and we were off to the races.

I like fresh ingredients, but this would be pretty easy to tweak to make it so that you could have this stuff on hand all throughout the winter. Just get a bag of frozen onions and throw it in the freezer. Get a jar of jalapeños and keep ’em in the pantry. Cans of beans will last forever in the pantry. It’s a perfect meal to whip up in a hurry on those snow days when you don’t feel like leaving the house. At least, that’s how I look at it. So, let’s get to this weird ass recipe.

What You’ll Need

  • 3 ~15oz cans of pinto beans
  • 1 medium onion (your preference between red, sweet, white, whatever)
  • 5-6 slices of bacon
  • 1 jalapeño 
  • Nashville hot seasoning*

*In case you didn’t write it down from my air fryer chicken tendies recipe, my Nashville hot seasoning consists of: 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 1.5 tbsp cayenne pepper, 1 tsp paprika, 1 tsp dry mustard, 1 tsp garlic powder, 0.5 tsp salt, 1 tsp Old Bay (my secret ingredient #1), 1 tsp McCormick Grill Mates Smokehouse Maple (my secret ingredient #2). Combine all seasonings in a bowl, stir it up together, and set it aside. Adjust the cayenne pepper to your heat preference – I took it down to 0.5 tbsp the last time I made this since I was chopping up a fresh jalapeño to go in with it.

How to do it

1. Fire up the crockpot on low, throw in a crockpot liner so that you save yourself some clean-up trouble later, and dump the pinto beans in. 

2. Throw your bacon in a skillet and cook it a little bit – you don’t have to get it all the way done, because you do want some of the grease to cook out in the crockpot to give this a fatty, savory flavor. If you don’t cook it long enough to get at least some of the fat rendered, you’re going to end up shitting your pants because of how greasy the dish becomes. I only had mine on for a few minutes before I chopped it up and threw it in the crockpot, and I still had quite a bit of grease to dispose of. So cook your bacon to a “grease level” of your liking, and then crumble/tear it up and throw it in the crockpot.

3. Dice your onion. Slice your jalapeño. Mix up your Nashville hot seasoning. Throw it all in the crockpot. 

4. Stir it up and let it simmer on low for five hours. That’s it! 

Finished product

It might not look all that pretty, but I’m telling you, it warmed my soul to the bone. There’s something about a tasty bowl of beans with a bite that can beat any frost that rolls in.

The SoBros Recipe Book

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

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