Simple as that, really.
The other day, I bought one of those cheapie packets of dehydrated red beans and rice, rehydrated it ;), and found it quite tasty. It also was familiar. Turns out mom used to make red beans and rice but does not remember how.
So I ask, how do I make red beans and rice?
For what it’s worth: I don’t eat seafood. None of it. No, not even shrimp. 
Thanks!
Well, here’s how I do it:
Take a pound of red kidney beans, rinse and sort them, and put them in a cast iron pot and cover with an inch of water. Add a good hunk of salt pork, bring them to a boil, and let them simmer for an hour.
Meanwhile, shred a large onion. In a heavy skillet, melt a couple of tablespoons of shortening (lard is even better), and to that add two or three tablespoons of flour (you’re making a roux here). Stir the flour and shortening together and cook for five or ten minutes, then add the shredded onion and a clove or two of minced garlic. Still it all together - it will form a pasty mass. To this paste, add a cup of water that the beans have been cooking in. Stir that all together, thin it down, and simmer. Add a tablespoon of hot sauce, a tablespoon of ground file (pronounced FEE-lay), and salt and pepper. Pour this whole melange back into the pot the beans are cooking in, and let it cook at simmer for an hour or two. Stir it every now and then to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pot and add water whenever you think it’s apt to burn.
Slice up a package of smoked sausage into 1/2 inch pieces. (Andouille sausage is even better!) Take about a half cup of beans and mash them into a paste. Stir the bean paste back into the bean pot. If this doesn’t thicken it up the way you like, mash up another half cup of beans and stir that into the pot. This is key - thickening it with mashed bean paste instead of flour makes for much better flavor.
Add the sliced sausage to the bean pot and continue to cook untill the sausage is heated through.
Serve over cooked white rice.
What Labdad said, except I use red beans instead of kidney beans. I also add more hot sauce to mine, but that is just personal taste. Otherwise, that excellent recipe will give you years of good eating!
(Kidney beans are cow food. How any human can eat them is beyond me! 
)
I’ve had pretty good results using this recipe. So far, everybody who’s tried it liked it. Only had one bad batch, when I used country ham and it ended up being way too salty.
Labdad uses all of the same ingredients we do, but his technique is much more time consuming than mine - I prefer the lazy way!
Instead of making a roux - wait until the beans cook down soft enough to remove a quarter cup of beans from the pot, smush them, and return the smush to the pot of cooking beans. That naturally thickens the gravy without fussing with a roux.
These recipes look delicious, but time-consuming. Is there a truly lazy-man’s way to make acceptable red beans and rice, using Goya seasonings, maybe? I know there’s an instant version they sell, but I’m looking for something halfway between that and what Labdad has described. Accusations of heresy cheerfully accepted.
Well, that is one strike. Now, for the clincher, how do you like your steak cooked?
Huh. Whodathunk? I didn’t know red beans & rice was that complicated. I guess the red beans & rice I always get at Popeye’s doesn’t cut it then?
I’ve never found a simple or quick creole ANYTHING. It’s second only to Indian for number of ingredients and steps of preparation! This one is pretty good, but still requires 10 hours or more of cooking if you use dried beans.
Here’s one for Puerto Rico style red beans and rice. There’s a lot of steps listed, but it’s basically, “make rice. Throw all this other stuff together and make beans. Mix.”
Medium rare, thank you very much 
And, although your recipe looks every so tasty, I am with Sal Ammoniac. See, I should have mentioned that I am, well, not the best cook (too put it delicately). The fewer steps, the less likely I am to screw up.
Is there a lazy-man’s red beans and rice? I’m obviously not too picky, as I was enjoying my from the pouch red beans and rice
One day, I will preview. I will also stop abusing the smilies…someday.
Define lazy: work or time?
I start with dried beans, rinse and sort them, start them soaking in the morning, and cook them later that evening, for about an hour and a half. All told, it’s a ten or eleven hour process, but only an hour or so is spent actually in front of the stove, cooking.
Similar to other recipes above, I prep onions (but I saute them in duck fat), and I cook the beans in a pot with enough liquid (I use chicken stock) to cover them by almost an inch. I throw in garlic and spices (I use the premade Northwest Cajun Spice brand, plus some extra cayenne), and simmer on low. If I rendered the duck fat out of a hunk of skin (I keep leftover pieces of duck skin in the freezer), I’ll stick the skin in with the beans to leach out additional flavor; it gets removed before serving. Stir very occasionally for an hour-plus, depending on bean volume.
At the thirty-five minute mark, I brown some arborio rice in a saute pan for a few minutes (either butter or olive oil will work; don’t use too much), put it in a baking dish with twice the volume of chicken stock, and bake, forking every couple of minutes during the last ten to check texture.
With about twenty minutes to go, I’ll sear some sausage so it’s easy to handle and cut without being cooked through, chop it into meat coins (:)), and add it to the simmering mixture to finish cooking.
Mix the rice and beans and serve. This is not a main dish for me; I use it as a side with, say, milk-poached catfish.
That’s about as lazy as I’m willing to be with it. I think of it as a meal that rewards the investment of time. I have other recipes that I can whip up in less than fifteen minutes if I’m feeling especially lethargic.
The one I use takes a while to cook, but the actual effort is pretty minimal. I can get my veggies pre-chopped, so the only real prep I have is on the meat, and that takes no time. For all the cooking time, I usually put in about 10-15 minutes of actual work, including any straining & stirring. And I use the 90-seconds-in-the-microwave rice in a bag that’s out now. That said, my mom skips the sauteing and uses a crock pot, so she does even less work.
Popeye’s beans are f-in’ AWESOME! Little expense though. At least in the quantities I like to eat 
.
Okay, chefs. How about a lazy man’s *veggie *red beans and rice? Lazy as in work although I can soak a mean bean with the best of them due to working in 3 different Mexican restaurants.
I guess I can just leave out the pork & sausage or whatever, but…any ideas are better than mine.
You can start with canned red beans. There’s one brand of canned beans that has the right consistency right out of the can but I’ve never seen it outside the New Orleans area.
LOL. I posted a recipe on my rice and beans, and that’s a great description of it.
For the record, Puerto Rican style rice and beans and Creole style red beans and rice aren’t the same dish. Some people might think they are close or comparable, but they are two entirely different dishes to me.
Having a mom from Puerto Rico and a dad from Louisiana, I learned very young the difference in the answer “What’s for dinner?”
Red beans and rice - Dad’s - Creole/Cajun - More of a smoky, sausage flavor, with the beans really mixed in with the rice in a thick sauce.
Rice and beans - Mom’s - Puerto Rican - The addition of culantro and spanish olives (although the recipe linked to by WhyNot has neither) makes a big difference in the taste, and even though there is ham added, it doesn’t have as smoky a flavor or smell. The beans are usually left in a sauce, so it’s *almost *stew like - The beans are poured over the rice.
My husband has been begging me to make rice and beans the past week or two.
Luckily we’re all headed back to my Mom’s in Jersey next week. I’ve begged her to make a pot and she promised she would.
Here’s my recipe.
It’s really not too hard. Most of the work is in the cutting of veggies. It’s a ‘one pot dish’ so clean up isn’t too bad. And the smell of the beans simmering is so delicious and comforting on a cold day.
Oh, and that link should read Here’s my recipe *for Puerto Rican style rice and beans.
*
I’ve yet to get my dad’s recipe for red beans and rice and experiment with it.
Maybe I’ll try one from this thread.
I do quick and easy RB&R. Get the rice cooker fired up.* Chop & sautee in medium to large saucepan 1 green bell pepper, a stick of celery, an onion, and some garlic if you’re feeling saucy or if you just can’t cook without garlic. (I can’t…) Optionally here I might add a bit of meat (ham or a spicy sausage) for extra flavour. Else I make it vegetarian depending on who I’m feeding. I use a splash of olive oil for the sautee but lard’d sure taste good. Pop a can or two of goya small red beans open, pour into saucepan with sauteed goodies. Add salt, amount depending on whether you added a salty meat or not. Add a couple of good grinds of black pepper, white pepper and a shake of cayenne. Add a bay leaf if you own one. Put the lid on, turn the pot down to a simmer, ignore for half an hour. Come back, smoosh a number of beans on the wall of the pan and stir the lot up. Cook 10 minutes more, serve over rice.
*Ours takes longer than I’m used to, about 40 minutes for just plain rice. So if you use another, quicker rice cooking method, change the location of this step in the recipe.
The Big Cheese - here’s a lazy veggie way that’s actually pretty easy AND good:
Ingredients:
1/2 a one lb bag of dried red beans - don’t worry about soaking
1 medium sized yellow onion
celery - a couple of stalks
bell pepper - optional - 1/2 if you use it
garlic - 1 pod minced
Cajun seasoning to taste (the premixed is fine)
pepper
bay leaf - 2 whole
olive or veggie oil
Saute the onion, garlic , celery and optional bell pepper in olive or veggie oil until tender (15-20 minutes)
Once the veggies are tender, dump the dried red beans and enough water or canned chicken stock to cover the beans plus 1.5" to 2". Add the bay leaf but no seasonings now. (2 minutes)
Bring to a rolling boil and keep boiling for 1 to 1.5 hours, stirring every 15 minutes or so and adding more water or stock to keep the water level at least 1" above the beans. (about 30 seconds x 4-6 times)
Remove 1/2 cup of the beans and smush them until they look like more of a paste rather than beans. Return those beans to the pot and add the cajun seasoning and pepper now. (takes about a minute)
Simmer for about 30 minutes and serve over hot, fluffy white rice. Especially good served with cornbread or hot, crusty french bread with real butter. (while this is simmering for the last 30 minutes, cook your rice)
IMPORTANT - beans and rice should not meet until they are in your bowl together, ready to be inhaled.
(Family trick - Whoever gets the bay leaf in their bowl doesn’t have to wash dishes that night.)
ENJOY!