gistfile1.txt

1 pound red kidney beans 1 link of Hillshire Farms smoked sausage (like polish
style) 1 celery stalk 1 yellow onion 1-2 bay leaves Ground cayenne pepper Brown
rice or long-grain white rice Crystal brand hot sauce

This is my pressure cooker adaptation of my mother-in-law's recipe.

Rinse 1 pound of red kidney beans, then cover with 3-4" of water and soak
overnight. The next morning, dump the water and rinse them thoroughly.

Chop one medium-sized yellow onion and one celery stalk.

In your pressure cooker, go a few times around the pot with olive oil and heat
until shimmering.

Add the onion and just brown the crap out of it. Seriously, I always stop too
soon. My mother in law gets it really browned. When it's about halfway browned,
I add the celery to the pot for the rest of the browning.

Once the onion is brown, cut the heat and add 5 cups of water. If I was doing
this in the crock or regular pot, I'd add way more but since we're not losing
any to steam, 5 cups of water is perfect.

Scrape all of the burnt crap up off the bottom of the pan and into the water.
This is the yummy stuff and we want it in the beans.

Add the beans to the pot along with a bay leaf or two and one link of smoke
sausage (like Hillshire Farms polish sausage style) cut into circular slices
about 1/4" thick. Add cayenne pepper to taste. It doesn't need much cayenne.
Contrary to popular belief, real-deal Cajun cooking is savory, not spicy!

Bring to pressure and then cook for 15 minutes. This is how long I did it in my
Instant Pot, which may not be the same as your cookers. The IP brings it to 15
PSI and then lowers it and cycles between 10 and 11.5 PSI.

After 15 minutes of cooking, remove from fire and allow the pressure to release
naturally. At about 15-20 minutes, I just manually dumped what little pressure
there was left.

Salt to taste. Refrigerate overnight before reheating and serving because it
just tastes better that way.

Serve over brown rice or regular long-grain white rice if you prefer. The Cajuns
usually use brown rice. Brown rice normally takes forever on the stove but is
also easy to cook ahead of time in the IP!

The Cajuns put Crystal brand hot sauce on top. The regular kind (not the extra-
hot). It's very tangy. I've never seen a bottle of Tabasco in a Cajun pantry.

https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Hot-Sauce.../dp/B0005ZHPFI/

Louisiana Brand is also okay if that's all you can get.