Frugal Cooking

I can’t say enough good things about beans. Beans are cheap, healthy, tasty and I love beans. While the most frugal beans start dried and are usually soaked overnight before boiling for a couple of hours. If you’re trying to put together a meal for pennies a serving, dried beans are a good place to start. Sometimes inspiration hits me and I can’t wait 24 hours for dried beans to be edible. That’s when I turn to canned beans for the following stew recipe.

A few tablespoons of beans added into the sauce rewarded me with exactly what I was looking for- a rich, creamy sauce without adding fat or starch.

I actually set out to make a bean and bacon soup. When I checked the pantry I didn’t have any white beans but did have some aduki beans. Why would I have aduki beans, you might ask?

The final texture of the sauce is much finer and silkier than most stews.

Common ingredients are probably must-haves, the unique ones could be optional.

Mexican moms have been cutting up leftover tortillas to make chips and chilaquiles for millions of years.