Instant Pot Black Bean Soup. (Photo by Tom McCorkle for The Washington Post)
When she was growing up in Miami, Ana Quincoces tells me, every day "instead of an alarm, I woke up to the sound of the pressure cooker.” She makes a hissing noise and smiles.
Quincoces, 58, is Cuban American, so you can probably guess what was in that pressure cooker: black beans. And to her, they represented just about everything that she loves about the food of her parents’ homeland, and still do: They’re comforting, and especially when made the Cuban way, they boast deep, satisfying flavours.
In 2007, years before she became famous for starring in "The Real Housewives of Miami,” Quincoces wrote her first cookbook, "Cuban Chicks Can Cook,” and she remembers saying then that she would never cook anything but traditional Cuban food. She didn’t like it when people tried to make it something that it’s not, such as by adding a mango sauce to any old dish, "and suddenly it was Cuban. Cuban food doesn’t have mango sauce.”
Fast forward to 2024 and, as Quincoces puts it, "Everything has changed about the way we eat.” So many people are looking for something that’s gluten-free, or that adheres to a Keto diet, or is vegetarian or vegan. And that’s why Quincoces wanted to update the cuisine in her fourth cookbook, "Modern Cuban” (University Press of Florida, 2024).
"I’m okay with the fact that people do have different eating preferences, requirements or necessities,” she tells me in a Zoom conversation from North Carolina, where she is spending time with a daughter who recently had a baby.
"But what I’m not okay with is the idea that Cuban food can’t be part of that, because it can. There are so many things about Cuban food that are actually healthy.”
Take those black beans. Quincoces mentions connecting with Dan Buettner, who in his "Blue Zones” work promotes beans as one of the common dietary habits of the world’s longest-living people. To Quincoces, one of the things that makes Cuban black beans healthy is that they prove that the addition of smoked ham hocks or bacon is superfluous.
"We don’t need any of those things to make them taste good.”
These days, Quincoces oversees a line of Latin-inspired sauces and marinades she created, called Skinny Latina, and when she’s not working on books she’s focusing on her podcasts: a true-crime one called Dial M for Miami, and one she cohosts with Ace Fanning called Reality Court.
That is, when she’s not cooking.
Her recipe for frijoles negros, served with white rice ("It’s the law!”), is built on the ingredients in sofrito, which she refers to in her book as "the heart and soul of most Cuban dishes.” They include onion, garlic, green bell pepper, tomato sauce, bay leaf, oregano, cumin and a generous dose of vino seco, the dry cooking wine that Cubans always have on hand. (I used sauvignon blanc, but she suggests that if you don’t have cooking wine, you consider employing a white drinking wine that you’ve let get past its prime in the fridge.) Quincoces’ beans also get a couple tablespoons each of red wine vinegar and sugar, bumping up the flavours even more.
Quincoces calls for the beans to cook for hours on the stovetop, until they become so tender and the broth so thick that the dish practically blurs the line between solid and liquid. To speed things up, I adapted it for the Instant Pot, not realising how in a sense I was going back to her mother’s method. Everything else about the recipe is pretty much the way her mother made it all those decades ago, she says - which suggests that what’s most modern isn’t the combination of ingredients, but the way we think about the result.
In fact, in deference to modern tastes, Quincoces says that if you’re looking for something lower-carb, you can eat the beans on their own, sans rice. Even if that means breaking the "law.”
Instant Pot Black Bean Soup
This speedy Instant Pot riff on Cuban black bean soup infuses the legumes with the aromatic vegetables common in a traditional sofrito, along with wine, vinegar and a little sugar for depth and balance. Skipping the soaking of black beans results in a richer flavour and colour, but you can soak them if you’d like to speed the cooking up even further; see Notes. See Variations for how to make this on the stovetop if you don’t mind the time. The soup is traditionally served with a scoop of long-grain white rice.
4-6 servings (makes about 8 cups)
Active time: 20 minutes. Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Storage: Refrigerate for up to 4 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.
Substitutions: Red wine vinegar >> apple cider vinegar. White wine >> 2 tablespoons more vinegar plus 14 tablespoons water (to get to 1 cup). If you don’t want the added sugar >> leave it out.
Variations: To make this on the stovetop, saute the aromatics, tomato paste and spices in a Dutch oven or other large pot, and then bring the beans and 6 cups water (instead of 4) to a boil. Boil for about 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to medium-low and add the remaining ingredients. Cover the pot and simmer until the beans are very soft and the stock has thickened, 3 to 3 1/2 hours. Taste and season with more salt and pepper as needed.
Notes: This was tested in a 6-quart Instant Pot. If you want to speed up the process further, you can soak the beans overnight, save the cooking water (to help the flavour and colour be richer than if you discard it) and check them after 40 minutes.
INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large white onion or yellow onion (12 ounces), chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely grated or pressed
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 pound dried black beans, rinsed
1 bay leaf
4 cups water
1 cup vino seco (Latin dry white cooking wine, such as Goya brand) or other dry white wine, such as sauvignon blanc (see Notes)
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon fine salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
Cooked white rice, for serving
Cilantro leaves, for garnish
DIRECTIONS
Set a programmable multicooker (such as an Instant Pot; see Notes) to SAUTE: MEDIUM or NORMAL, depending on your model. Let the pot heat for 2 minutes, then add the oil and heat until shimmering. Add the onion, green pepper and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, cumin and oregano and cook just until fragrant, 1 minute.
Add the beans, bay leaf, water, wine, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper. Secure the appliance’s lid and make sure the steam valve is sealed. Select PRESSURE (HIGH) and set the cook time to 1 hour. (It should take about 10 minutes for the appliance to come to pressure.)
When the beans have finished the 1 hour of pressure cooking, release the pressure manually by moving the handle to "Venting.” To do so, cover your hand with a towel and make sure to keep your hand and face away from the vent when the steam releases. Open the appliance and check to see if the beans are falling-apart tender. If not, return them to PRESSURE (HIGH) for 10 minutes at a time, manually releasing the pressure and steam each time, until they are very tender.
Discard the bay leaf, taste, and season with more salt and pepper as needed.
Serve with a scoop of rice and garnish with the cilantro leaves.
Nutritional information per serving (1 1/3 cups), based on 6: 421 calories, 10 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 60 g carbohydrates, 571 mg sodium, 0 mg cholesterol, 18 g protein, 14 g fiber, 8 g sugar.
This analysis is an estimate based on available ingredients and this preparation. It should not substitute for a dietitian’s or nutritionist’s advice.
Adapted from "Modern Cuban” by Ana Quincoces (University Press of Florida, 2024).
