 Hi, my name is Andrea with Foodimentary Adventures in Food. Today I'm sharing one of my family's favorite comfort meals, pinto beans and smoked ham hocks. This meal is inexpensive, comforting, and hearty. So let's get started. So you're gonna need smoked ham hocks. This is about a little over two pounds of smoked ham hocks. Now I would encourage you, if you've never tried them before in your beans, definitely give them a try. I know some people use ham or bacon or smoked turkey, but there's just something about the flavor of ham hocks. It is so good. So I have already rinsed and cleaned off my ham hocks and they're sitting here as you can see in the bowl. And then I have one pound of dried beans. And then for my seasonings, I am using garlic powder, onion powder, seasoned salt and pinto bean seasoning. Now I know that you may not have access to pinto bean seasoning. If you don't have it, that's fine. I have used, I have made beans with the season, with the pinto bean seasoning and without, and it's totally fine. It's just a personal preference of mine. Also feel free to use other seasonings that you like. So the first thing you're gonna do is sort through your beans. And what I do is just pour a few beans in my hand at a time and you're gonna sort them and look for things like rocks. Okay, so I've picked through the beans and I didn't find any rocks this time. But here's an example of some of the types of things that I pulled out. This is a bean, it looks like it has a bunch of dirt on it. Just misshapen beans. Those are the types of things that you're looking for. Next, you're going to thoroughly rinse the beans several times in a colander. So I'm going to show you how to soak your beans using the quick boil method. So all I did was put my drained beans in a pot and I'm gonna add some water. It's about an inch or so above the beans. And what I'm gonna do is bring my beans to a boil, uncovered, and then once the beans come to a boil, I'm going to remove the pot from the burner, place a top on top of the pot, and then let the beans just sit for an hour. Now, if you don't want to do a quick boil method, you could also just put your beans in a bowl, cover them with water, like an inch above in the bowl, cover it with some wax paper, and then you can just let them soak overnight or for about eight hours. Okay, so in a separate pot, the same time that I have my beans getting ready for a quick boil, I've got my ham hocks going. So I just covered the ham hocks. So the water is barely above the ham hocks and I'm waiting for my ham hocks to come to a boil. Once they come to a boil, I am going to cover the pot with the lid and then I'm just gonna let those ham hocks cook for about two hours until they get nice and tender. So by the time my ham hocks are ready, my beans are going to be ready too. Okay, so here are the ham hocks. It's been about two hours and you can see how rich that broth looks. I didn't add any additional water to it at all. So the ham hocks are a little bit tender, not much. By the time we're finished cooking the pinto beans, these ham hocks are gonna be fork tender and you'll just be able to flake that meat off, but not just yet. So right now, what I'm gonna do is add in the pinto beans and I've already drained them in the colander. This is what they look like. So they're still pretty firm to the touch. So I'm just gonna drop them in and just gonna stir them around of it so that they're submerged. And I prefer cooking my pinto beans on top of the stove. I know some people prefer to cook them in the crock pot, but when you cook them on top of the stove, that bean broth gets so nice and rich. You just can't beat it. Okay, so I've got my beans in the pot. Now I'm gonna add some seasoning. I'm going to add some onion powder and some garlic powder. Now I'm gonna hold off on adding any salt until my beans are tender and cooked. Reason being, if you add your salt right now, it's gonna make your beans tough and you definitely don't want tough beans. All right, so I am going to cover up my pot and let these beans simmer for about three or four hours. You're gonna wanna check on them occasionally and stir them up. Okay, so it's been about three hours and as you can see, the beans are still simmering away. They've still got a ways to go, but the ham hocks are ready to come off the bone. Now, you don't have to take the meat off the bone. I prefer that. I just don't like having the big pieces of ham hock in there with my cooked beans. That's just a personal preference. So they are super tender right now. As you can see, the meat just falls away and that's what you're looking for. So these ham hocks have cooked for about five hours so it took them that long to get to this state. So I'm gonna take the meat off the bones. I'll probably leave some of the skin in the beans too because Howard likes that part. And then I'm also going to salt the beans. I can do that at this point because the beans have gotten pretty tender. Okay, so here are the beans. This isn't all of them. I just put some of them in a bowl so that you guys could see them a little bit better. But once I pulled that meat off of the ham hocks, I let the beans continue to simmer for another hour and that broth is so thick, so savory. The meat is tender like butter and the beans are nice and creamy. I hope you all enjoyed this video. If you did, please make sure to give us a thumbs up. We'd love for you to share the video. If you have not subscribed to our channel, we definitely love to have you. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you all next time.