 Hi, I'm Nicole and welcome to the Produce Meets Simple Kitchen, we're your go-to resource for all things fruits and veg. I am super excited because we have a special guest today. This is Lisa from the Vienna Vegan. Hello! I got an Instant Pot for Christmas. It was on my list because our daughter is vegetarian and I heard from a rumor that dried beans are really, really great when done in an Instant Pot, so I was hoping Lisa could share with me some tips on how to use this baby because I haven't used it before. So I also recently got an Instant Pot while it was like last year for Christmas and I let it sit on the shelf and just like judge me for not using it for about six to eight months. But once I finally got on the train, it changed my life. The beans, first of all, buying dried beans means that like you save a lot more money. But it's like so good when you have them in the Instant Pot. They just become like velvety and buttery, oh my god, it's like changing. Today we're going to make some black bean soup, it'll be vegan and I'll tell you guys the different ways of making this with Instant Pot and without because not everyone has one. Yeah, perfect. So what are we going to start with? Okay, we're going to start with some oil and onions. Okay, so I'm happy we're using local Ontario onions. They're available all year pretty much and the beans, I'm guessing you did some prep last night. I did, yeah. So I actually soaked these beans and the reason why I did that is because beans, they have this chemical called phytic acid which your gut bacteria really loves but because it loves it so much that's one of the reasons why people get gassy when they eat beans. So to prevent that and also to increase the nutrient absorption, you soak the beans to release all the phytic acid because that compound generally binds with like iron, calcium, magnesium and protein which are basically the benefits for eating the beans. We have black beans, garlic, onion and bay leaf and some oil and there's two spices here. Yeah, this is cumin and paprika. Okay, excellent. So let's put this on the sauté. Okay. Do you remember how to do it? Yeah, that's it. Okay, I'm fancy. Yeah, and then it'll beep when it's ready. Okay, so we'll wait. Yeah, just wait for the beep. Oil, yep. So about one tablespoon of vegetable oil, you can use any kind you want. And the garlic? Onions first. Onions first. Yeah. So these are two cooking onions, yellow onions, sauté them until they're kind of browned. Okay. So let's see how it goes. Yeah. Okay, so the onions have browned slightly and you get some nice caramelization on the bottom. They smell amazing. It's my favorite. Now we can add the garlic. Okay. Yeah. So this is about four cloves of minced garlic. And we can also add our spices too to cook up the spices a little bit. Yeah, perfect. Toast them. So that's two teaspoons of cumin and one teaspoon of paprika. You can also use smoked paprika for a little smokiness too. Oh, that's super good. This smells great. All right, so now we can deglaze the bottom of the pan with some water. And that way you lift up all that like caramelization. Yeah, excellent. To add depth to the recipe. So now we can add our beans. This is about two cups of dried beans that have been soaked. So about... So there were two cups when they were dry. Correct. Okay. Yeah. So we'll add this in. And do you rinse them? You rinse them after they're soaked, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay, so let's add the rest of the water. Okay. So you can just see the beans kind of just underneath the water. We've just covered it. So we're also going to add some bay leaves because that adds extra flavor. So this is three dried bay leaves. And then now we can cover it up. We'll close it, put it on a ceiling, and then we'll pressure cook it. Awesome. Yeah. Okay, so there's like a little knob back here. We're just turning it to ceiling. It's either venting or ceilings. We're putting on ceiling. And then we're going to put it on beans. We'll cancel this. Beans for 13 minutes. Wow, super quick. Yeah. Okay. So we've chopped the tomatoes and we're just about to chop the onions. And I'm noticing that this still says on. How the Instant Pot works is that it'll come up to pressure and then it'll count down from the 13 minutes that we've set. And then it'll naturally release pressure too. So that's why it's kind of misleading when people say Instant Pot recipes are so fast. They can be faster, like cooking the beans itself. 13 minutes versus like the three hours that you would cook huge jeans. Like that is a huge difference. Yeah. But you still have to add like 15 minutes to come up to pressure and then about 45 minutes to come down from pressure naturally. No, that's good to know. I'm glad you're here because I would have just thought I'd done something wrong. No, you're fine. So this is the salsa that goes on top of it because you want to add a little bit of freshness because it's like very like savory and like umami. But you want to have a little like light, bright cheeriness on top. Yeah. Plus it's nice to add fresh. So more vegetables, more better, you know. So we have some tomatoes here. We have some red onion here because I find red onion has the best flavor for salsa. Yeah. And also when it's not cooked, it's great. Yeah. But it's a little too much for me. So we've soaked it in some water just to kind of like tone it down a little bit, take off the edge. And then I'm going to get Nicole here to chop them up to be a little bit fine, fine for the salsa. I'm actually going to show you how to cut the lime so that this is like the perfect. Okay, go for it. We switch. Okay. Tag out or tap out. I don't know. I don't know sports. So you cut around the core kind of like this and it makes it easier to squeeze because limes have kind of like a harder tougher core than a lemon would. So it's like not as easy to like put it in like the reamer. Love it. So this is that way you have like this middle square bit, which you can kind of like ring like laundry. Yeah. And then these are a lot easier to squeeze. Yeah. But yeah, I find this gets a lot more juice that way too. Yeah. For sure it does. And it's a way easier. You don't have to like do finger yoga before. Yeah. You get like the hand squeeze. Like who needs those like those? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My dad had those when I was growing up. He did them every day. Like 50 each hand. This is way easier actually. Right. Top tip. Yeah. And you just bring it. So one thing I actually kind of want to mention, typically when I see people do black bean instant pot recipes, they only cook the black beans for about like seven to eight minutes. I think my beans are just old, so they take a little bit longer. So I found that the best timing for like that size of bean is about 13 minutes. But overcooking beans for like a soup is not really an issue. But if you want to have them kind of hold on stuff like that, maybe if your beans are not quite as old as mine. How do we know if they're old? I hoarded these beans because when I first bought the instant pot, I was like, all right, I'm going to make so many dried beans. I got really ambitious. I bought like four kilos of beans. That was like two years ago, right? So they're still fine. Yeah. But I think just based on how long you have them, you can probably determine whether or not they're old. I think if you had it for less than like six months, you're probably fine to cook for eight minutes. We have chopped our tomato and red onion, which we soaked a little bit. Lime juice. And then we're going to add some salt and pepper. Do you want to? Yeah. I like pepper. You don't have to add pepper if you don't want to. I just find it as like an extra. Yeah, I think it's awesome. Delicious. So yeah, about a half teaspoon of salt probably. But just a little bit more. It's very good. Yeah. So it's like nice and bright. The lime juice is amazing. Simple, but really fresh. Yep. So we're just going to wait for this to cook for one more minute, and then we're going to let the pressure naturally release. You can also manually release it, but it's kind of scary. I don't like it. Okay. So there's two ways to do it. You just let it sit with the thing on sealing. You keep it as is for the natural release. Okay. And that takes about 40, 45 minutes. About, yeah, 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how much water you have in there. And then the other way is you can manually release it. But because there was like a little bit more water, sometimes it kind of spurts out. Okay. It's a little scary. I'd rather not do that. So we're just going to let it. Okay. But to do it, if you wanted, you would just turn that steaming thing. Yeah. To venting. I recommend putting like a tea towel over top. Ah. It's ready. On the back of the Instant Pot, there's like a little catch for the water. So like when, as it's like coming out too, like when you put it on venting, there will be water that kind of comes out through this as well. It's supposed to catch all of that water. Yes. But when there's a lot of water like this, because we're still under the max line where we think about one half, I think. Yeah. That's where we are. The safety level of it. But it'll still spur out just from my experience. So when I put a tea towel over it and from the water in, this will catch the extra liquid that's there. Okay. Good to know. Keep that there. Rinse it out when you're done. But that's just for. Okay. And the other thing I'm noticing is that this button is up now. And before we started cooking, it was all the water. Yeah. So that's the valve that like plugs up when there's enough pressure. Okay. And once it's plugged up, it'll, that's how you know that it's under pressure. Okay. Yeah. Good to know. See you guys when it's all ready. So we're back. It's been about 50, almost an hour. But now what we're going to do is we're going to pull it to venting because the thing is still up, but it's just going to like kind of poof a little bit. It'll be fine. So and then we'll release the pressure and then we'll add some seasoning. So give it extra flavor and then we'll blend it up and serve it. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's go. That's it. Okay. That's when the pain goes down like that. Okay. Let me take it off. Don't forget to take out the Baileys before you blend it because nobody wants like that hard. Yeah. I've done that before. We know it's by 20s and young. I made that mistake. All right. Not tasty. So we're going to add about two tablespoons of this concentrated bouillon paste. You can also use vegetable broth in the first place. It's in place of water. So if you don't have an instant pot, you can easily do this with like on the stove top with cooked beans already or you can cook them for like I think it's two or three hours on the stove top. Yes. It's quite a long time actually. I would say to make it simple and something you could do maybe after work on a busy weeknight, you could probably make this same kind of ingredients just using can pains instead of the dried. You might need a little bit more water because with the instant pot there's no steam that escapes. So you don't have the water evaporating out. So you might need to add an extra like cup or two. So now we're going to blend part of it just to distribute the flavor from the broth paste. So this is a stick blender. You can easily use like you can spoon out half of it in a normal blender and just pour back in. All right. So we're just going to blend half of it just to get like a creamy thicker soup. Okay. But if you don't like that, if you just like the beans and like the broth, you can just leave it as is. So Lisa's also keeping that submerged so she doesn't splash the hot hot soup all over. So I only like blend it a little bit. I still like pieces of bean in there. Okay. So I guess that's personal choice. You can either blend it probably more or less depending on your personal preference. So what is really great is that really this is just onions, beans, garlic. Let's give it a taste. Okay. Great. Really flavorful. You've never guess has had her being angry. Really it's like so easy. Yeah. As long as you caramelize the onions pretty well, you have like a really decent depth of flavor. Yeah. This is a really good shortcut. You can use like bouillon like cubes as well. Yes. Just the equivalent of the water. I really, really love that it's simple to make but it's also really economical. So it's just onions, basically garlic and the black beans. So let's scoop it out and then put the salsa on. So I would never have actually thought about putting a salsa on here but I think it's a great idea. How much would you like? Yeah, like a scoop, decent scoop. Bon appetit. Bon appetit. Amazing. Thanks so much for joining us today and thank you to Lisa for coming here and teaching me about Instapod and how to make the delicious soup using some really simple fresh ingredients and there's one other video. Yes. So there's a video over on my channel so you want to watch it until we're in the corner. You come to my channel, I'll make another Instant Pot recipe that is a vegan pho but in Instant Pot so it's way easier. Great. Okay. So please like, comment and subscribe and we'll hopefully see you soon for more Produce Made Simple. Bye. Hi. I'm Nicole. Welcome to the Produce. Sorry. Hold on. I was pushing my hair. All right. Go ahead. Sorry. I'm sorry. I was just thinking of like an 80's montage just like we need the one piece and I love it.