August 4, 2026 • 43 mins
To call beans and rice a staple is to undersell the importance of beans and rice. Today we break down the ubiquity of this beloved food combo.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. When you put the three
of us together, add a little miso, you got stuff
you should Know which rhymes with miso?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh boyd you rescued that one. I was on the
edge of my seat. I was like, where's this one going.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, well, you can always bring it back to rhyming. Yeah,
unless it doesn't rhyme, and then you got nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, something that doesn't rhyme is rice and beans or
beans and rice?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
And which way? Which way do you prefer to say it?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I've always said beans and rice.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Really I say the exact opposite. Hey, I say and
rice beans?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
You dopest. So I think I was trying to figure
out why I thought of this one, because this was
my idea. We did an episode on rice last year
and just its you know, importance as a crop all
around the world. And I think maybe when I was
in Belize, I had a beans and rice dish and
it just got to me, got me thinking. I was like, man,
I feel like almost every country I've been to in
(01:16):
the West, and certainly every island and there's like some
version of beans and rice, and like, I was kind
of wondering what the deal was and why those that
the combination specifically of those two things was a thing.
And I guess out of this the idea was born.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's a great idea. I'm glad you did. And I
definitely ate rice and beans for lunch today just from
dying all this. Oh yeah, I put together what we
had on hand. So I had pinto beans, yeah, mixed
with wild rice, which was actually really good.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Interesting combo it was.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I took a cue from Jerry and I actually added
a little miso to it, stirred it all together. That
helped really pull the room together. And then I put
some tuna on there on.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Top, oh tune on top. That's the joshuay.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I was like, what would I call this? And I
came up with a freehole importantes.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Did you really?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh no, that wasn't off the cuff, So yeah, I
guess I did.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Really, my favorite bean if I'm going to eat beans
and rice, is actually pinto beans. Although I'm not going
to turn my nose up at black beans or refried
or refried black or any of that stuff. I love
all that stuff, but I love pinto beans.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
What about red beans?
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I like red beans, okay, but I much much prefer
pinto beans like red beans. And rice isn't my favorite
out of the beans and rice dishes. And my favorite
rice far and away is and I don't know what
the word for it is or if there is one,
but the very very traditional Mexican rice that my friend
PJ makes and he's going to teach me. That's made
(02:54):
with like chicken stock and tomatoes hard. It's just it
sort of turns out a light brown orange color. Yeah,
and it's not clumpy or sticky. It's all like the
rice is very loose within each other. That's my favorite
kind of rice is that specific kind of Mexican rice.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It's almost like an orzo.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, but like other places, like the place down the
street has like a cilantro rice, which is really good,
but I like just that really traditional Mexican rice.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I know, I agree with you. One of the ironic things.
Dave helped us with this, and he pointed something out
that I hadn't really considered. You said that like everywhere
you've been to in the West or any island especially
has their own beans and rice dish, right, New Mexico
is what I always associate with, or it certainly initially
(03:41):
associated with rice and beans. And they actually don't have
a rice and beans dish. They just give you rice
and beans and that's actually the authentic way that Mexico
does it. They don't have like a national rice and
beans dish.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, that's a combined although let's be honest, it gets
on that plate. What are you doing. You're eating that
stuff together on one fourfold at a time.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
But they stopped one step short. All they had to
do is come up with the name for mixing together
the rice and beans, and they would be like every
other Caribbean, Central and South American nation for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And you know, we'll kind of hop around to these
in more detail. But like for instance, in Costa Rica,
a lot of time for breakfast, still have spotted rooster
or guyo pinto, and you know, everyone's a little different.
They have like an onion saute with bell peppers, black beans,
the rice from the day before, with some chop cilantro,
(04:37):
some eggs on the side. Nicaragua also has a version
of that as well, which is really good.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I bet me and and me went to Nicaragua, and
I don't remember having this, and I feel like we
really missed out. Oh really because it sounds really good.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah. Jamaica of course has their rice and peas, which
is a little bit different. It's known as the Jamaican
Coat of Arms. And we definitely had rice and peas
in Jamaica. And they're talking about pigeon peas in this case.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, which is a kind of bean, not peas. Peas, yeah,
which no one likes. No one sane likes peas.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I love green peas, English peas, do you Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Do not like them. What's funny is Momo takes after
me because she will like eat her whole breakfast or
her whole dinner, and if there's a pea in it
and it's not mashed together with everything else, yeah, she
will just eat everything else, but that pea.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Do you make her own food or do you use
one of those like fresh food dog food things?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh umy cooks for a few times. Yeah, so she
gives her peas, but she'll mash them up.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah that's good. You know, my buddy Justin, We talk
about Justin all the time. Now they put their dogs
on a raw foods diet, and they throw all kinds
of stuff in there. They'll have like they have chickens,
and so they'll throw the chicken eggs in there, and
the eggshells and just all sorts of stuff. And those
dogs are as like healthy and lemon shiny as I've
ever seen him.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I'm sure Mamma's food is cooked, it's not raw, But
she has a pretty great diet for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, you should try their all thing, all right, sure,
I mean we should all try the raw thing. It's
really good for you, So, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
One of the biggest things that I learned in this
episode was that coolantro and cilantro are not just different
spellings for the same thing. Uh yeah, I did not
know that, did you You didn't? I think I did,
all right, Well, cilantro is what well at cilantro, everybody
knows cilantro. It tastes like dish soap. Coolantro is something
(06:40):
totally different. It looks different, it's a completely different plant,
but it's used as a spice or an herb. It's
got a pungent, garlicy taste and it just doesn't taste
anything like cilantro. But if you've ever had sofrido, which
is it, I guess almost like a seasoning as much
as it is a dish. Yeah, that that has culantro
(07:01):
in it.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, I like sofrido.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I do too, although at what's the place, the place,
the burrito place.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Chile Chipotle.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, there's Sofrido is all Tofu. So that's my really
only experience with sofriedo. I'm like, I kind of like this,
but not all that much.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It's because it's Tofu.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
The reason I bring up safrido is because in Puerto
Rico that's a big part of their rice and beans,
actually rice and pigeon peas too. They call there's ros coandus.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, delicious. I've had that in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Boy, you've been all over, haven't you.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Well. I had never been to any Caribbean island in
my life until like ten years ago, and then we started,
you know, once we had a daughter, we started doing
some of those places. I mean, we've ticked a few
of those off the list, and they're the people at
I haven't had a bad experience at any of them.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
No, I'm sure not. Have you been to a Ruba?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I have not been to a Ruby yet.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Strongly recommend. Oh okay, it's great. It's a good beautiful,
beautiful beaches, really nice slow pace.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
The only thing is you know how you said like
all all, Like every Caribbean island has its own rice dish.
They also typically have their own like signature like tiki drink.
Oh yeah, sure, and Aruba's is lacking. It's not. OK's
something that they could they could really focus on and improve.
But I think there's like it's good enough, it's fine.
(08:37):
But that was the only I don't even call it
a complaint. That was the only thing of note no,
that was the only well complaint I had about Aruba
in the entire country. It's just really cool.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Oh great, we'll check it out. I know we're going
to Bermuda on our cruise. That'll be a first time
for me.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Do you mean the Bahamas or Bermuda?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I mean Bermuda, baby, same here.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I've never been either.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And we'll be there together.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
We are. It's going to be pretty cute.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
All right, Let's talk about beans and rice, because we
need to talk about each of these a little bit.
Beans are some of the oldest foods in the world
as far as cultivating and growing something. We have archaeological
evidence that it was grown in meso America's early at
seven thousand BC, and it is a legome and that
(09:25):
means that it is a seed grown in a pod.
And that's the deal of bean farmers, you know, from
the ancient times. They would select these pods that didn't
split open when the beads matured, and they could like
dry and store them easier, because that's I mean, eating
something out of a can is great, but if you
really want to make some great beans, you should get
(09:45):
dried beans and take the time to do that that way.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I have never ever ever done that. I don't think.
Oh man, if I have, I don't think they actually
turned out. I think I have tried it before and
it was like, how does this even work?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Well? Do you have an int a pot or a
pressure cooker?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
No, I'm bereft.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, okay, that's the best way to do it, or
maybe the easiest modern way to do it.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
But the old timey people didn't have pressure cookers, So
how did they do well?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
That's why I changed my stance from best because that's
probably the best way is however they did it, they
probably just long played the long game. And stewed and
boiled them over hours and hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I mean, I know you have to soak them like
overnight to start even just even to get started. But yeah,
I've never I'll have to give it a try again.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
That's why you never did it. You're not going to
make start on tomorrow's meal today. That's not the joshuay.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So you were talking about the common bean, right, Yeah,
that was the one from meso America. That's what we
think about with like I guess, like pinto beans and
black beans and all that, right, Yeah, there's plenty of
other kinds of beans. I mean we mentioned pigeon peas.
I think those are African, right, Yeah, there's also black
(10:59):
eyed peas with known in Africa as cow peas. Yeah,
there are plenty of other peas that don't come from
meso America. Chickpeas, lentils, yeah, favas, they're not from Mezzo America.
Fa fava beans yeah, with a nice kiante.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Africa is I mean, here's the spoiler. We have Africa
to think for well a lot, but we have Africa
specifically in this episode to think mainly for beans and rice.
We'll talk about rice a little bit. We went over
obviously rice a lot in our rice episode, but there
was there's the Asian variety in the African variety of rice.
(11:39):
And in the fourteen hundreds, basically in fifteen hundreds, Portuguese
traders introduced the Asian rice to Africa and that basically
replaced the native species because it was easier to grow,
and it was you know, you could because it was
easier to grow, it was more lucrative. But that original
African rice was cultivated on what's called the Rice and
(12:00):
West Africa.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Right, apparently we have the Senegal Gambians, which is now
Senegal and Gambia. Have you ever seen a map of
Senegal and Gambia.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
I don't know that I've ever paid attention.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I think the Gambia River kind of goes through the
middle of the country and if you put a buffer
around the river that's Gambia, it's like it stabs from
the coast into Senegal. It's really interesting. But they used
to be one empire, and this empire was essentially considered
the cradle of West African or even all of Africa's rice.
(12:37):
So if you felt like coming over and stealing African
people from their homes to plant rice in the New World,
you would visit Senegal or Gambia.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, I mean, I can't remember now what we talked
about in the rice episode, but there obviously was a
theory that the Spanish Conquistadors are who brought rice to
like the Spanish Caribbean and Mexico. But you know, there
is an argument that because enslaved Africans were brought over
(13:09):
in such great numbers that they they brought the culture
of it, because apparently the conquistadors were Spanish Catholics in
the sixteenth century who who thought rice was like pagan
food of Muslim wars. So while they might have technically
brought rice, they didn't have the culture of like knowing
about rice and knowing how to grow it and how
(13:31):
to best eat it that they had in West Africa.
So in Mexico, when West Africans arrived there as slave labor,
they brought their rice with them and probably first planted
rice in.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Mexico, right exactly. I thought that was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, for sure. And the original sort of I guess
ancestor you would call it of African beans and rice
dishes is from Senegal and it's called chibu ni yebay
and that is African rice and cow peas that were
native to West Africa there, and it's considered a sacred
(14:07):
dish over there.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yes, and cowpeas, remember I said, are black eyed peas,
So this is like black eyed peas in rice. This
is considered like at least the earliest kind of documented
rice and beans dish that anyone's been able to trace
back to West Africa. Yeah, and there's a direct line
between that and Hop and John, which is essentially the
(14:32):
same thing. You just add a pound of bacon when
you cook it and change the name.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah. And I think they're both generally served or traditionally
served with cheez. Why am I blanking now? The green
collar collar greens?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, I forgot about that part.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I love color greens, but have you ever tried to
make them?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I actually make a really good collared green.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Okay, I bet it's good. But theroblem is you got
to buy, like, you gotta get like three grocery carts
full of them to make a meal for a family.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, I just throw it away they cooked down. No,
you have you have to have a really good sized stockpot.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Another thing you can do is is wil tit a
little bit first, so you don't need as big of
a stockpot.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Look at you.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
The biggest pain is to wash it off because there's
so much of it, washing all the grid off. You
just can't find collars unless they're bagged and already washed. Yeah,
if you're going with fresh, you gotta wash them off.
And it's a pain.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
But I I don't like pork. I don't eat a
pig if I ever can help it.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Again, they're really smart, and I feel terrible. Turkeys are
not smart, and I have no problem eating them, and
so I would use like a smoke turkey wing rather
than a hamhot when it does, that's same thing. It's
really good. A little bit of rice wine vinegar in there.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, and like it's.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Essentially those two ingredients are about it.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, that's you know, I'm not a big vinegar guy,
but that's where that's where I like vinegar my college.
And of course that's a Southern thing, but also, like
we said, comes from Senegal originally in spirit at least
we talked about in the rice episode. The Emily just
walked by and s waving at me and she never
does that.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Hey, Josh says, hello, she.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Didn't wait back. No, I'm just kidding. She didn't hear
me in this. In the American South, you know, rice
was a huge cash crop before cotton and tobacco came along,
and of course in Carolina because recently it was probably
the rice episode where we talked about the Carolina gold rice.
Carolina plantations were really seeking out the Senegambians to to
(16:47):
you know, to lead the rice planting effort there, and
so that's where they concentrated their efforts as far as
their brutal slave trade went.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, that was a real distinction between the slave trade
that came later when it was a focus on sugar,
cane and cotton. Is when you purchased a Senegambian slave,
you were purchasing their knowledge as well as their labor
to help plant low country rice in the Carolinas. Yeah,
(17:17):
which you know, That's one of the other things too,
is these same West African early slaves introduced a lot
of root vegetables to America as well, because they were
in some cases a lot of cases I would imagine,
able to grow their own food, and so they would
(17:37):
grow stuff from home like yams and things like that.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, I mean, well on slave ships, they would bring
over their food to obviously sustain them for that trip.
And then once they you know, reached wherever their destination was,
which was you know, a huge diaspora, obviously they would
plant that stuff because that's what they like to eat.
And before you know it, if they were working like
(18:00):
and like the plantation homes and serving the plantation owners,
they would serve them those meals and that's how it spread.
It's a you know, it's a pretty ugly past that
we have to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
You know, I was thinking about that. I don't know
if this is going to end up in the episode,
but there's like there's such a fine line between just
talking about stuff like this matter of factly because all
of this stuff did happen, i know, while also acknowledging
just the horror that was, like the basis of it
(18:33):
are going on in the background, without hitting everybody over
the head, right and detracting from what you're trying to say.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Now, I'm with you, man, It's it's an uncomfortable topic
every time, but we can't do episodes on things like
like so much that we owe to Africa and not
and like you's surely not gonna whitewash it, so no, no, no,
it's just one of those things.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, no, I don't, I don't mean to suggest Yeah no, no,
let's you stop talking about that part.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
We weren't out New yorren't suggesting that obviously. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Now, but one thing that did kind of stand out
to me was so the first you mentioned like, if
you worked in like the plantation house, you might serve
something from home. And that's where Hop and John came from.
Quite clearly, from the Chibu naybe to Hop and John
actually went through a South Carolina Charleston aristocrat named Sarah Rutledge,
(19:28):
who anonymously wrote an eighteen forty seven cookbook that was
the first printed recipe for Hop and John. And so
it's quite clear that her her enslaved staff was like,
let me make you something from my homeland, and she
was like, this is crazy good. But that like that
kind of brought me into that actual like dining room
(19:49):
where there are people sitting there, and I'm sure Sarah
Rutledge was like, you're never gonna guess what my you know,
Tanya has made for us as a special treat showing
off to her guests what her enslaved servant has come
up with. And it's like, just think about sitting at
that table and being served by somebody who you know
(20:10):
is not allowed to leave, and if they try to leave,
they will be murdered, and the person who murdered them
is not going to be arrested or tried or convicted.
And that's just how things are really think about, Like,
sitting at that table, isn't that nuts?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I know, it's hard to wrap your head around. And
I wonder if they're like existing diaries from people of
the time that had any new like if any of
them felt bad about this stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I wondered that too, because yes, you know a lot
of times people are like, well, they were just of
their time, and that certainly does explain a lot of behavior,
Like that's just how society was. So there are plenty
of people who probably didn't give much thought to it.
There is no way there wasn't also plenty of people,
and I'm sure including people in the South, who are like,
this is messed up, and maybe they didn't do anything
(20:59):
about it or say any about it. Yeah, surely there.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Were no you'd like to think so you know, yeah,
all right, let's take a break and regather. It's an
interesting thought experiment, and we'll come back and get back
to beans and rice. Right after this.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
You came along and it was like, yeah, well we
were work pals.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
All right, we're back with beans and rice. We were
talking about, obviously, the spread of beans and rice through
the African slave trade. That is certainly the case in Louisiana,
New Orleans, another state here in the United States, the
Southern United States, where African beans and rice dishes came
over and in their case that like you mentioned earlier,
(22:04):
the classic red beans and rice that actually start out
in Haiti, where enslaved Africans worked on sugar cane and
coffee coffee plantations there owned by French colonists. And in
that case they cooked up pigeon peas and rice and
a dish. And you're gonna have to say this because it's.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
French riz at poise ruge.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Oh, come on, play along. Yeah, there you go, And
that that's the original New Orleans red beans and rice
came from Africans via Haiti.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Is that what that means?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Well, I mean, that's that's the lineage.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
The thing I didn't know about this. This is my favorite.
Red beans and rice I think is so great. I
mean just because of the flavor, sausage taste too, the flavor. Right.
But one thing I didn't know about is so apparently
Monday is the traditional day to eat red beans and rice.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And Monday was also washed day back in the Antebellum
era of New Orleans. So the women, the washer women
who were well doing the laundry on Mondays would use
the same coals, not the same water, but the same
coals to simmer rice and beans later on, and they
(23:28):
would throw in leftover ham from the day before Sundays. Yeah, dinner,
and you have red beans and rice on wash day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And apparently that's still a tradition. I think schools in
New Orleans still serve red beans and rice on Mondays.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
That's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, we can concentrate on a few countries now, because
again that I mean, we can talk about dozens of
countries that have these dishes. But about half of the
twelve million enslaved Africans that came over during the Atlantic
slave trade landed in Brazil. Uh, so we're gonna talk
a little bit about Brazil. Cuba and Jamaica specifically, and
(24:07):
today Brazil has maybe I mean it's hard to pit
these against each other, but they may have the strongest
beans and rice culture in the Americas because they are
like every lunch and dinner like we should have beans and.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Rice, yeah, which I mean that makes sense there there're
beans and rice dish is called my Portuguese is a
little rusty. So I'm gonna say, feyada.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Actually look this one up.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Oh, let's hear it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
How how close was there's a jois sound? So it's
apparently uh.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, all right, sorry, Yeah, there you go. That is
their rice and beans dish. And just like rize poi rouge,
there's a definite like connection to the slavery area of
Brazil as well.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, for sure, because they would do like they did
in the American South. They would take the what we're
called like the undesirable cuts of meat that were cast
off by the plantation owners and like like pig like
pork cheek and pigs feet and hamhocks and stuff like that, jowls,
and they would use that stuff. And so the best
way to usually to cook that kind of thing is
(25:18):
a very slow cook stew and That's what fejuata is.
So they could you know, simmer that thing all day
long while they were you know, toiling and working, and
they eat that with color greens. Actually that that may
be what I was thinking earlier.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, still, I mean we can rewrite history.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Collar What about Cuba.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
So you mentioned how the Catholic Spanish considered rice a
pagan Moorish dish, yeah, or food. That division is actually
reflected in Cuba's rice dish. Well, it depends. I think
the west side of Cuba eats they it's called Moros
e Cristianos more like Moors were Muslims and Christians, and
(26:08):
it's black beans and rice, white rice. And then the
other side of the island eats congree, which is red
beans and rice.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
That's right, And apparently it's a metaphor for modern Cuba
as well. That's a Cuba, modern Cuba. That's like people
say Washington, Yeah, where you have, you know, a sort
of fairly equal divide of white people and black people
in Cuba. And about I think as high as sixty
(26:37):
five percent of Cubans descended from enslaved Africans because the
indigenous Taino people that was the population of Cuba before
the Spanish colonizers came along and basically killed them off,
not completely, but decimated them.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Right the congre though the red beans and rice that
also probably came from Haiti, just like red beans and
rice came to New Orleans. Yeah, through the after the
Haitian Revolution when a bunch of former slaves were like,
let's start traveling.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah. And you know, rice and beans is a big
deal in Cuba because of the various times over the
years that are decades rather that they've been in food
crisis because of initially like the collapse of the Soviet
Union and then you know, still ongoing US trade embargoes
that have left Cuba in a bad state. So rice
(27:31):
and beans apparently is the sort of a symbol of
their determination as a people to get by.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah. I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, and then
we can't not talk about Jamaica. Jamaica is its own
thing as far as rice and beans go. Not only
do they call their beans peas because remember their pigeon peas. Yeah,
they cook theirs like way differently from everybody else. They
simmer it in coconut milk. Huge difference is they cook
(27:58):
the rice and the beans together in one pot rather
than cooking them separately and bringing them together on the plate.
They also use different seasonings, So with red beans and rice,
it starts with the Holy trinity celery, onions and green
bell pepper, right, Jamaican holy trinity is time, garlic and scallions,
(28:19):
which I'm fine with both of those trinities, sure. And
then they also spice theirs up literally with all spice,
but also with Scotch bonnet peppers, which no human has
any business going anywhere near.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, those are pretty spicy.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
And they that's I mean, like this is its own dish.
But you said it before. It was the Jamaican coat
of arms. It's just so common that you just have
that like every meal, from what I understand.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, for sure, I had almost every year here in
one of the neighborhoods near me in Kirkwood, they have
the Kirkwood Spring Fling and then they have the chicken
wing contest the Wing Fling, and my buddy Matt that
lives near us is the stuff. You should know. Guy
has gotten me to be one of the quote unquote
celebrity judges most years.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, and this year I had a Scotch bonnet wing.
That was the hottest thing I've ever put in my mouth.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, but it's not even close to like the hottest pepper.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
I know.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
It was unbelievably hot. It took twenty minutes for me
to even feel normal again.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
I'm sure it was bad. They're pretty though, That's the thing.
That's how they get you. You're like, wow, it's a
pretty pepper.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I mean, this chicken wing was the color orange I've
never seen before.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Man, forget that. Yeah, I would have been like, well,
I'm not the celebrity judge anymore.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I guess should we take another break? Yeah, all right,
we'll be right back with why beans and rice is popular?
Right for this.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
You came and it was like, yeah, well we were
work pals.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
So chuck. We've been focusing mainly on the Caribbean, Latin America,
and Africa as far as like rice dishes go, right, Yeah,
and a little bit of the United States more the
southern area. Sure, there's like rice and bean dishes are
like so universally eaten by traditional cultures around the world
(30:32):
that there's actually an anthropologist name Sydney Mintz who's like,
I think this is actually one of the oldest dishes
humans make, and that it's been sustaining cultures around the
world for thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, he's he's got his own theory. It's called the core, fringe,
legome pattern, and it's those three things. He basically says
that in every culture in their diet, they have a
core grain involved. And as you can tell from our
rice episode and this one, like a lot of the time,
it's rice. It can be you know, other things depending
(31:08):
on where you are, but rice is definitely one of
the big ones. And then you have a legome to
complement that grain, in this case beans or peas. And
then you've got the fringe, right.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
The fringe this is fringe is in Surrey with the
fringe on top like a decoration, not a peripheral. Right, Yeah,
it's the sauceage. It's the seasonings, the herbs and spices
that make each rice or grain and bean dish unique
to a specific group or region.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, And he basically is like, this is this combination
of these three things. He calls it quote the basic
building blocks of world cuisine, and it's it's a very
just super ancient thing that's been around all over the
world forever.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I found that interesting that he makes a point though,
like it doesn't have to be rice, I think even
though half of the world gets there like eats rice
every day. Yeah, but there is like other kinds of
grains as well. Like have you ever had Ethiopian food? Uh?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, it's been a while.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
They have like these kind of pancake like bread, very
flat bread, and you put the food basically into that
and make like a little toastata or burrito or something
out of it essentially, or you can use it to
sop stuff up. But like that's their main grain, like
they I don't think you have a meal in Ethiopia
(32:38):
without that that bread. Do you know what it's called
in Jera in Jerra?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I think, so that sounds good. I need to eat food.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
It's been a while for me, but every time I've
had it, I I loved it. Yeah, And I mean
Ethiopia is just one place of many. There's a lot
of other places that also that do use rice as
the core grain that are nowhere near Latin America, the
Middle East. I believe in Persia they have a ton
of different beans and rice dishes. India has something called
(33:10):
rajma chawall, which I mean, it doesn't matter what it is.
If it's Indian food, I'll eat it and I love it.
But they have Rajma chawall would not exist without the
New World because they make it with red kidney beans yeah,
and tomatoes, both of which come from the New World.
And then they India up with basmati rice.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yeah for sure. Yeah, Indian food is not something I
would associate with red kidney beans, so I'll have to
try to soak that out for sure.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
And then Turkey has something. It's a staple called kuru
fasuli fasuli v pilav and it's a rice pea loof
with white bean stew, which sounds good too.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
I love white beans, like a white bean chili.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Yeah, But Sydney mint seems to be onto something though,
you know, like they rice and beans in particular seem
to be like all over the place. And anytimes something's
like that nearly universal. It's probably pretty.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Old, yeah, and probably fairly healthy, because if ancient cultures
are eating stuff for thousands of years, it's probably not
you know, junk food, right, and that's new you probably heard, like,
you know, if you eat rice and beans together it's
complete protein because they compliment one another and filling in
the blanks of what like the key amino acids that
(34:28):
the other is missing, and the amino acids are the
building blocks of protein. And it's not like that's not
one hundred percent true, but it's kind of true.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I've seen both. I've seen that. Yeah, essentially, it is
a complete protein if you put them both together.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
And eat enough.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
I feel like, yes, that's the key. I think if
you really want to nitpick, you can be like, well,
complete protein has one hundred percent of all of the
essential amino acids that you need. They're essential because your
body doesn't make them an abundant enough supply, so that
we have to get them from external sources. I eve
food and I think there's nine of them. Yeah, there's
(35:08):
nine of them. If you eat a steak or some
tuna or like a protein like that, bam, you're covered
and it doesn't take very much. The critique of rice
and beans as a complete protein is yes, if you
put them together, they contain enough of everything that if
you eat enough rice and beans, you'll have a complete protein.
(35:29):
I think the world generally is like no, that it's
a complete protein. Stop being a pedantic putts.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, if you have a cup of cooked pintos at
six ounces, it's about fifty percent of most amino acids,
but twenty seven percent of one called methionine. So that's
what's missing. On the bean side. A cook a cup
of cooked white rice provides about ten to twenty percent
of most of those amino acids and fourteen percent of
(35:57):
the methionine. But when you eat them together, and you
eat enough, and I think they say the ideal ratio
is about eighty percent rice dry protein to twenty percent bean.
It's basically a complete protein. You just have to eat
a little more. But low card people are like, why
would you do that when you can have a three
ounce steak and get all you need.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yeah, and the bees of rice people are like, why
would you kill an animal when you can eat rice
and beans.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
That's a good point. Did you ever eat it? The
grit in Athens before it closed? The vegetarian restaurant over
off Prince Avenue off downtown.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
It was not my place, but I ate there before.
I mean, I don't think you could live in Athens
at that time and not eat there.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah, I think Michael Stipe might have been an owner
at one point or co owner or maybe an investor.
But they if you were a poor college student, which
was like you know, most of the people I knew
and me and myself were, could go to the grit
and get it was called the staple and it was
just white rice and beans with some spices, and it
(36:57):
was like three bucks or something, and we would eat
that a lot. It was a good way to get
a fairly healthy lunch in your body as a college
student for not much.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Whenever I think of rice and beans, I think of
this one man. I'm pretty sure he's a taxi driver,
and he was eating in a Cuban restaurant in New
York Upper East Side where Umi's and my friend Mollie lives,
and it was just around the corner from Molly's house
where we were staying in This guy, it was winter
and he just had this bowl of rice and beans
(37:27):
and he was eating it. He could have been he
was middle aged, he could have been a little kid,
he could have been an old man. The way he
was eating it. He was enjoying it. But it was
so so like clearly the consuming that dish was so
ingrained in this man that like it was its own thing.
(37:49):
Like you could have put anybody else in front of
that bowl, like me eating it, I would not have looked.
It wouldn't have been fluid, it wouldn't have been It
just looks so natural the way this man was. And
then at the same time you could see him being
like nourished by It was just cool. It drove home
to me, like just how big a deal rice and
(38:09):
beans are to a lot of the cultures where they
are a big deal. It is neat.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Oh that's cool. I love that. Yeah, I know what
you mean though, not even with rice and beans, but
when you see someone from the culture eating the thing
that kind of defines it and sustains their culture. Yeah,
it's different the way it goes down and the way
it looks. Yeah, it's like me and fried chicken.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Right, I'm trying to think of what I eat like that.
Maybe a donut.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Maybe someone from another country telling a story about visiting
America and seeing this guy eat fried chicken and his
friend was eating donuts, and.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah, uh, you can be nourished by beans. Though rice
is fine, depending on the kind of rice. Like the
problem with white rice is it has a high clistemic
index y, which I'm sure we talked about the rice episode,
but that basically means it jecks your insulin up while
you're dyeing it. What's cool is that when you eat
beans with white rice, the beans have such a low
(39:05):
glycemic index that it washes out a lot of the
white rice. Is glycymic index removes it. So that's pretty cool.
And then beans, of course are just on their own nutritious.
One of the big things that they have lots of fiber, Yeah,
which is the component of beans that make them the
magical fruit. Apparently you get more than half of your
(39:27):
daily fiber from one cup of pinto beans.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, that's a lot. They lower your LDL cholesterol, which
is the bad cholesterol. They're going to improve your gut
healthy if you have a risk of well, I guess
everyone has some risk of colorectal cancer.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's getting worse too.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, it's going to decrease that risk. And what else
there something about the like it fills you up right.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah. You are satiated by two different hormones that are
triggered by eating beans, which is cool. And you you
basically digest your food a little slower, so you feel
fuller longer.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Yeah, Like last night, not in prep for this, because
I didn't even bother making beans. We just been traveling
a lot. We have no food here, and I didn't
know what to eat, and I didn't feel like like
ordering delivery food because I hate doing that. So I
opened up a can of refried black beans and I
just cooked those and put some spices in them and
threw some cheese on top and ate a bowl of
(40:27):
refried beans.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
It was delicious. I farted all night long.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
You may eat three fried beans a surprising amount and
she does not fart.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Well, that's because you me is perfect and I'm not.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Oh dude, I'm right there with you, like I've been
holding it in from lunch the whole time you've been recording.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
She's a real lady.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
That's right. You got anything else about beans, rice, rice,
am beans?
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Nothing else? I think I'm gonna go on a rice
and beans terar. How about this? I would love if
people know a great recipe for that that traditional Mexican rice.
Send it in.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Oh good idea, It is so good. I swear to God,
there's lard isn't it?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Probably so, and it takes some time. You know, it's
not the kind of thing you can just whip up
in a second.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Uh okay, sure, that's it depends if you're a Cuban
taxi driver in New York, I'll bet you could whip
it up in a second.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
This is a weird episode, Chuck, all right, I'll take that.
All right. Well, since Chuck's taken weird, that means he
just unlocked the listener mail.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
This was from our episode on postpartum depression that just
came out in real time. Hey guys, I just listened
to your PPD YP was inspired to write in I
want to thank you for shining a light on this
extremely difficult subject, specifically the parts in which you acknowledge
the uncomfortable, intrusive thoughts that some moms might experience. My
first time mom of a four month old have been
diagnosed with PPD and I'm getting all the treatments you
(41:59):
outlined it your episode, but it's still a lonely journey.
And your episode is a very succinct, accessible way to
inform people that support me in my life about what
I'm experiencing. So as a woman. I'm always second guessing
my feelings even when it comes to my PPD symptoms.
But the stats that you shared in the episode remind
me that this is very real and I'm not just
being dramatic. So as two CIS men, you did a
(42:22):
great job and keep doing good work. And that is
Rachel from Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Nice. Thank you very much Rachel for writing in to
tell us that, because that's exactly why we did that episode.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
You know, yeah, and we're you know, you're in our thoughts.
I know that's a very lonely place to be.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Yeah. Well, well, said Chuck. Hopefully listening to that episode
made people who are going through PPD feel a little
less lonely. Yeah, if you are going through PPD, or
you're doing something that has something to do with one
of our episodes, or like Chuck said, you have a
good recipe for Mexican rice, we want to hear from you.
(43:00):
If you don't have anything like that to say, that's fine,
email us. Send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too. When you put the three
of us together, add a little miso, you got stuff
you should Know which rhymes with miso?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh boyd you rescued that one. I was on the
edge of my seat. I was like, where's this one going.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, well, you can always bring it back to rhyming. Yeah,
unless it doesn't rhyme, and then you got nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, something that doesn't rhyme is rice and beans or
beans and rice?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
And which way? Which way do you prefer to say it?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I've always said beans and rice.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Really I say the exact opposite. Hey, I say and
rice beans?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
You dopest. So I think I was trying to figure
out why I thought of this one, because this was
my idea. We did an episode on rice last year
and just its you know, importance as a crop all
around the world. And I think maybe when I was
in Belize, I had a beans and rice dish and
it just got to me, got me thinking. I was like, man,
I feel like almost every country I've been to in
(01:16):
the West, and certainly every island and there's like some
version of beans and rice, and like, I was kind
of wondering what the deal was and why those that
the combination specifically of those two things was a thing.
And I guess out of this the idea was born.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's a great idea. I'm glad you did. And I
definitely ate rice and beans for lunch today just from
dying all this. Oh yeah, I put together what we
had on hand. So I had pinto beans, yeah, mixed
with wild rice, which was actually really good.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Interesting combo it was.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
I took a cue from Jerry and I actually added
a little miso to it, stirred it all together. That
helped really pull the room together. And then I put
some tuna on there on.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Top, oh tune on top. That's the joshuay.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
I was like, what would I call this? And I
came up with a freehole importantes.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Did you really?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh no, that wasn't off the cuff, So yeah, I
guess I did.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Really, my favorite bean if I'm going to eat beans
and rice, is actually pinto beans. Although I'm not going
to turn my nose up at black beans or refried
or refried black or any of that stuff. I love
all that stuff, but I love pinto beans.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
What about red beans?
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I like red beans, okay, but I much much prefer
pinto beans like red beans. And rice isn't my favorite
out of the beans and rice dishes. And my favorite
rice far and away is and I don't know what
the word for it is or if there is one,
but the very very traditional Mexican rice that my friend
PJ makes and he's going to teach me. That's made
(02:54):
with like chicken stock and tomatoes hard. It's just it
sort of turns out a light brown orange color. Yeah,
and it's not clumpy or sticky. It's all like the
rice is very loose within each other. That's my favorite
kind of rice is that specific kind of Mexican rice.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It's almost like an orzo.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, but like other places, like the place down the
street has like a cilantro rice, which is really good,
but I like just that really traditional Mexican rice.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I know, I agree with you. One of the ironic things.
Dave helped us with this, and he pointed something out
that I hadn't really considered. You said that like everywhere
you've been to in the West or any island especially
has their own beans and rice dish, right, New Mexico
is what I always associate with, or it certainly initially
(03:41):
associated with rice and beans. And they actually don't have
a rice and beans dish. They just give you rice
and beans and that's actually the authentic way that Mexico
does it. They don't have like a national rice and
beans dish.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, that's a combined although let's be honest, it gets
on that plate. What are you doing. You're eating that
stuff together on one fourfold at a time.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
But they stopped one step short. All they had to
do is come up with the name for mixing together
the rice and beans, and they would be like every
other Caribbean, Central and South American nation for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And you know, we'll kind of hop around to these
in more detail. But like for instance, in Costa Rica,
a lot of time for breakfast, still have spotted rooster
or guyo pinto, and you know, everyone's a little different.
They have like an onion saute with bell peppers, black beans,
the rice from the day before, with some chop cilantro,
(04:37):
some eggs on the side. Nicaragua also has a version
of that as well, which is really good.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I bet me and and me went to Nicaragua, and
I don't remember having this, and I feel like we
really missed out. Oh really because it sounds really good.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah. Jamaica of course has their rice and peas, which
is a little bit different. It's known as the Jamaican
Coat of Arms. And we definitely had rice and peas
in Jamaica. And they're talking about pigeon peas in this case.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, which is a kind of bean, not peas. Peas, yeah,
which no one likes. No one sane likes peas.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I love green peas, English peas, do you Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Do not like them. What's funny is Momo takes after
me because she will like eat her whole breakfast or
her whole dinner, and if there's a pea in it
and it's not mashed together with everything else, yeah, she
will just eat everything else, but that pea.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Do you make her own food or do you use
one of those like fresh food dog food things?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh umy cooks for a few times. Yeah, so she
gives her peas, but she'll mash them up.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah that's good. You know, my buddy Justin, We talk
about Justin all the time. Now they put their dogs
on a raw foods diet, and they throw all kinds
of stuff in there. They'll have like they have chickens,
and so they'll throw the chicken eggs in there, and
the eggshells and just all sorts of stuff. And those
dogs are as like healthy and lemon shiny as I've
ever seen him.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I'm sure Mamma's food is cooked, it's not raw, But
she has a pretty great diet for sure.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, you should try their all thing, all right, sure,
I mean we should all try the raw thing. It's
really good for you, So, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
One of the biggest things that I learned in this
episode was that coolantro and cilantro are not just different
spellings for the same thing. Uh yeah, I did not
know that, did you You didn't? I think I did,
all right, Well, cilantro is what well at cilantro, everybody
knows cilantro. It tastes like dish soap. Coolantro is something
(06:40):
totally different. It looks different, it's a completely different plant,
but it's used as a spice or an herb. It's
got a pungent, garlicy taste and it just doesn't taste
anything like cilantro. But if you've ever had sofrido, which
is it, I guess almost like a seasoning as much
as it is a dish. Yeah, that that has culantro
(07:01):
in it.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah, I like sofrido.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I do too, although at what's the place, the place,
the burrito place.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Chile Chipotle.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, there's Sofrido is all Tofu. So that's my really
only experience with sofriedo. I'm like, I kind of like this,
but not all that much.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
It's because it's Tofu.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
The reason I bring up safrido is because in Puerto
Rico that's a big part of their rice and beans,
actually rice and pigeon peas too. They call there's ros coandus.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Yeah, delicious. I've had that in Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Boy, you've been all over, haven't you.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Well. I had never been to any Caribbean island in
my life until like ten years ago, and then we started,
you know, once we had a daughter, we started doing
some of those places. I mean, we've ticked a few
of those off the list, and they're the people at
I haven't had a bad experience at any of them.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
No, I'm sure not. Have you been to a Ruba?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
I have not been to a Ruby yet.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Strongly recommend. Oh okay, it's great. It's a good beautiful,
beautiful beaches, really nice slow pace.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
The only thing is you know how you said like
all all, Like every Caribbean island has its own rice dish.
They also typically have their own like signature like tiki drink.
Oh yeah, sure, and Aruba's is lacking. It's not. OK's
something that they could they could really focus on and improve.
But I think there's like it's good enough, it's fine.
(08:37):
But that was the only I don't even call it
a complaint. That was the only thing of note no,
that was the only well complaint I had about Aruba
in the entire country. It's just really cool.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Oh great, we'll check it out. I know we're going
to Bermuda on our cruise. That'll be a first time
for me.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Do you mean the Bahamas or Bermuda?
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I mean Bermuda, baby, same here.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I've never been either.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And we'll be there together.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
We are. It's going to be pretty cute.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
All right, Let's talk about beans and rice, because we
need to talk about each of these a little bit.
Beans are some of the oldest foods in the world
as far as cultivating and growing something. We have archaeological
evidence that it was grown in meso America's early at
seven thousand BC, and it is a legome and that
(09:25):
means that it is a seed grown in a pod.
And that's the deal of bean farmers, you know, from
the ancient times. They would select these pods that didn't
split open when the beads matured, and they could like
dry and store them easier, because that's I mean, eating
something out of a can is great, but if you
really want to make some great beans, you should get
(09:45):
dried beans and take the time to do that that way.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I have never ever ever done that. I don't think.
Oh man, if I have, I don't think they actually
turned out. I think I have tried it before and
it was like, how does this even work?
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Well? Do you have an int a pot or a
pressure cooker?
Speaker 2 (10:02):
No, I'm bereft.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, okay, that's the best way to do it, or
maybe the easiest modern way to do it.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
But the old timey people didn't have pressure cookers, So
how did they do well?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
That's why I changed my stance from best because that's
probably the best way is however they did it, they
probably just long played the long game. And stewed and
boiled them over hours and hours and hours.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
I mean, I know you have to soak them like
overnight to start even just even to get started. But yeah,
I've never I'll have to give it a try again.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
That's why you never did it. You're not going to
make start on tomorrow's meal today. That's not the joshuay.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So you were talking about the common bean, right, Yeah,
that was the one from meso America. That's what we
think about with like I guess, like pinto beans and
black beans and all that, right, Yeah, there's plenty of
other kinds of beans. I mean we mentioned pigeon peas.
I think those are African, right, Yeah, there's also black
(10:59):
eyed peas with known in Africa as cow peas. Yeah,
there are plenty of other peas that don't come from
meso America. Chickpeas, lentils, yeah, favas, they're not from Mezzo America.
Fa fava beans yeah, with a nice kiante.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Africa is I mean, here's the spoiler. We have Africa
to think for well a lot, but we have Africa
specifically in this episode to think mainly for beans and rice.
We'll talk about rice a little bit. We went over
obviously rice a lot in our rice episode, but there
was there's the Asian variety in the African variety of rice.
(11:39):
And in the fourteen hundreds, basically in fifteen hundreds, Portuguese
traders introduced the Asian rice to Africa and that basically
replaced the native species because it was easier to grow,
and it was you know, you could because it was
easier to grow, it was more lucrative. But that original
African rice was cultivated on what's called the Rice and
(12:00):
West Africa.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Right, apparently we have the Senegal Gambians, which is now
Senegal and Gambia. Have you ever seen a map of
Senegal and Gambia.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
I don't know that I've ever paid attention.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
I think the Gambia River kind of goes through the
middle of the country and if you put a buffer
around the river that's Gambia, it's like it stabs from
the coast into Senegal. It's really interesting. But they used
to be one empire, and this empire was essentially considered
the cradle of West African or even all of Africa's rice.
(12:37):
So if you felt like coming over and stealing African
people from their homes to plant rice in the New World,
you would visit Senegal or Gambia.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah, I mean, I can't remember now what we talked
about in the rice episode, but there obviously was a
theory that the Spanish Conquistadors are who brought rice to
like the Spanish Caribbean and Mexico. But you know, there
is an argument that because enslaved Africans were brought over
(13:09):
in such great numbers that they they brought the culture
of it, because apparently the conquistadors were Spanish Catholics in
the sixteenth century who who thought rice was like pagan
food of Muslim wars. So while they might have technically
brought rice, they didn't have the culture of like knowing
about rice and knowing how to grow it and how
(13:31):
to best eat it that they had in West Africa.
So in Mexico, when West Africans arrived there as slave labor,
they brought their rice with them and probably first planted
rice in.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Mexico, right exactly. I thought that was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, for sure. And the original sort of I guess
ancestor you would call it of African beans and rice
dishes is from Senegal and it's called chibu ni yebay
and that is African rice and cow peas that were
native to West Africa there, and it's considered a sacred
(14:07):
dish over there.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yes, and cowpeas, remember I said, are black eyed peas,
So this is like black eyed peas in rice. This
is considered like at least the earliest kind of documented
rice and beans dish that anyone's been able to trace
back to West Africa. Yeah, and there's a direct line
between that and Hop and John, which is essentially the
(14:32):
same thing. You just add a pound of bacon when
you cook it and change the name.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Yeah. And I think they're both generally served or traditionally
served with cheez. Why am I blanking now? The green
collar collar greens?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, I forgot about that part.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I love color greens, but have you ever tried to
make them?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
I actually make a really good collared green.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Okay, I bet it's good. But theroblem is you got
to buy, like, you gotta get like three grocery carts
full of them to make a meal for a family.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, I just throw it away they cooked down. No,
you have you have to have a really good sized stockpot.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Another thing you can do is is wil tit a
little bit first, so you don't need as big of
a stockpot.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Look at you.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
The biggest pain is to wash it off because there's
so much of it, washing all the grid off. You
just can't find collars unless they're bagged and already washed. Yeah,
if you're going with fresh, you gotta wash them off.
And it's a pain.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
But I I don't like pork. I don't eat a
pig if I ever can help it.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Again, they're really smart, and I feel terrible. Turkeys are
not smart, and I have no problem eating them, and
so I would use like a smoke turkey wing rather
than a hamhot when it does, that's same thing. It's
really good. A little bit of rice wine vinegar in there.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, and like it's.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Essentially those two ingredients are about it.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, that's you know, I'm not a big vinegar guy,
but that's where that's where I like vinegar my college.
And of course that's a Southern thing, but also, like
we said, comes from Senegal originally in spirit at least
we talked about in the rice episode. The Emily just
walked by and s waving at me and she never
does that.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Hey, Josh says, hello, she.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Didn't wait back. No, I'm just kidding. She didn't hear
me in this. In the American South, you know, rice
was a huge cash crop before cotton and tobacco came along,
and of course in Carolina because recently it was probably
the rice episode where we talked about the Carolina gold rice.
Carolina plantations were really seeking out the Senegambians to to
(16:47):
you know, to lead the rice planting effort there, and
so that's where they concentrated their efforts as far as
their brutal slave trade went.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, that was a real distinction between the slave trade
that came later when it was a focus on sugar,
cane and cotton. Is when you purchased a Senegambian slave,
you were purchasing their knowledge as well as their labor
to help plant low country rice in the Carolinas. Yeah,
(17:17):
which you know, That's one of the other things too,
is these same West African early slaves introduced a lot
of root vegetables to America as well, because they were
in some cases a lot of cases I would imagine,
able to grow their own food, and so they would
(17:37):
grow stuff from home like yams and things like that.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, I mean, well on slave ships, they would bring
over their food to obviously sustain them for that trip.
And then once they you know, reached wherever their destination was,
which was you know, a huge diaspora, obviously they would
plant that stuff because that's what they like to eat.
And before you know it, if they were working like
(18:00):
and like the plantation homes and serving the plantation owners,
they would serve them those meals and that's how it spread.
It's a you know, it's a pretty ugly past that
we have to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
You know, I was thinking about that. I don't know
if this is going to end up in the episode,
but there's like there's such a fine line between just
talking about stuff like this matter of factly because all
of this stuff did happen, i know, while also acknowledging
just the horror that was, like the basis of it
(18:33):
are going on in the background, without hitting everybody over
the head, right and detracting from what you're trying to say.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Now, I'm with you, man, It's it's an uncomfortable topic
every time, but we can't do episodes on things like
like so much that we owe to Africa and not
and like you's surely not gonna whitewash it, so no, no, no,
it's just one of those things.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, no, I don't, I don't mean to suggest Yeah no, no,
let's you stop talking about that part.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
We weren't out New yorren't suggesting that obviously. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Now, but one thing that did kind of stand out
to me was so the first you mentioned like, if
you worked in like the plantation house, you might serve
something from home. And that's where Hop and John came from.
Quite clearly, from the Chibu naybe to Hop and John
actually went through a South Carolina Charleston aristocrat named Sarah Rutledge,
(19:28):
who anonymously wrote an eighteen forty seven cookbook that was
the first printed recipe for Hop and John. And so
it's quite clear that her her enslaved staff was like,
let me make you something from my homeland, and she
was like, this is crazy good. But that like that
kind of brought me into that actual like dining room
(19:49):
where there are people sitting there, and I'm sure Sarah
Rutledge was like, you're never gonna guess what my you know,
Tanya has made for us as a special treat showing
off to her guests what her enslaved servant has come
up with. And it's like, just think about sitting at
that table and being served by somebody who you know
(20:10):
is not allowed to leave, and if they try to leave,
they will be murdered, and the person who murdered them
is not going to be arrested or tried or convicted.
And that's just how things are really think about, Like,
sitting at that table, isn't that nuts?
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I know, it's hard to wrap your head around. And
I wonder if they're like existing diaries from people of
the time that had any new like if any of
them felt bad about this stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
I wondered that too, because yes, you know a lot
of times people are like, well, they were just of
their time, and that certainly does explain a lot of behavior,
Like that's just how society was. So there are plenty
of people who probably didn't give much thought to it.
There is no way there wasn't also plenty of people,
and I'm sure including people in the South, who are like,
this is messed up, and maybe they didn't do anything
(20:59):
about it or say any about it. Yeah, surely there.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Were no you'd like to think so you know, yeah,
all right, let's take a break and regather. It's an
interesting thought experiment, and we'll come back and get back
to beans and rice. Right after this.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
You came along and it was like, yeah, well we
were work pals.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
All right, we're back with beans and rice. We were
talking about, obviously, the spread of beans and rice through
the African slave trade. That is certainly the case in Louisiana,
New Orleans, another state here in the United States, the
Southern United States, where African beans and rice dishes came
over and in their case that like you mentioned earlier,
(22:04):
the classic red beans and rice that actually start out
in Haiti, where enslaved Africans worked on sugar cane and
coffee coffee plantations there owned by French colonists. And in
that case they cooked up pigeon peas and rice and
a dish. And you're gonna have to say this because it's.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
French riz at poise ruge.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Oh, come on, play along. Yeah, there you go, And
that that's the original New Orleans red beans and rice
came from Africans via Haiti.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Is that what that means?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Well, I mean, that's that's the lineage.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
The thing I didn't know about this. This is my favorite.
Red beans and rice I think is so great. I
mean just because of the flavor, sausage taste too, the flavor. Right.
But one thing I didn't know about is so apparently
Monday is the traditional day to eat red beans and rice.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And Monday was also washed day back in the Antebellum
era of New Orleans. So the women, the washer women
who were well doing the laundry on Mondays would use
the same coals, not the same water, but the same
coals to simmer rice and beans later on, and they
(23:28):
would throw in leftover ham from the day before Sundays. Yeah, dinner,
and you have red beans and rice on wash day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
And apparently that's still a tradition. I think schools in
New Orleans still serve red beans and rice on Mondays.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
That's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, we can concentrate on a few countries now, because
again that I mean, we can talk about dozens of
countries that have these dishes. But about half of the
twelve million enslaved Africans that came over during the Atlantic
slave trade landed in Brazil. Uh, so we're gonna talk
a little bit about Brazil. Cuba and Jamaica specifically, and
(24:07):
today Brazil has maybe I mean it's hard to pit
these against each other, but they may have the strongest
beans and rice culture in the Americas because they are
like every lunch and dinner like we should have beans and.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Rice, yeah, which I mean that makes sense there there're
beans and rice dish is called my Portuguese is a
little rusty. So I'm gonna say, feyada.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Actually look this one up.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Oh, let's hear it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
How how close was there's a jois sound? So it's
apparently uh.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, all right, sorry, Yeah, there you go. That is
their rice and beans dish. And just like rize poi rouge,
there's a definite like connection to the slavery area of
Brazil as well.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, for sure, because they would do like they did
in the American South. They would take the what we're
called like the undesirable cuts of meat that were cast
off by the plantation owners and like like pig like
pork cheek and pigs feet and hamhocks and stuff like that, jowls,
and they would use that stuff. And so the best
way to usually to cook that kind of thing is
(25:18):
a very slow cook stew and That's what fejuata is.
So they could you know, simmer that thing all day
long while they were you know, toiling and working, and
they eat that with color greens. Actually that that may
be what I was thinking earlier.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, still, I mean we can rewrite history.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Collar What about Cuba.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
So you mentioned how the Catholic Spanish considered rice a
pagan Moorish dish, yeah, or food. That division is actually
reflected in Cuba's rice dish. Well, it depends. I think
the west side of Cuba eats they it's called Moros
e Cristianos more like Moors were Muslims and Christians, and
(26:08):
it's black beans and rice, white rice. And then the
other side of the island eats congree, which is red
beans and rice.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
That's right, And apparently it's a metaphor for modern Cuba
as well. That's a Cuba, modern Cuba. That's like people
say Washington, Yeah, where you have, you know, a sort
of fairly equal divide of white people and black people
in Cuba. And about I think as high as sixty
(26:37):
five percent of Cubans descended from enslaved Africans because the
indigenous Taino people that was the population of Cuba before
the Spanish colonizers came along and basically killed them off,
not completely, but decimated them.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Right the congre though the red beans and rice that
also probably came from Haiti, just like red beans and
rice came to New Orleans. Yeah, through the after the
Haitian Revolution when a bunch of former slaves were like,
let's start traveling.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah. And you know, rice and beans is a big
deal in Cuba because of the various times over the
years that are decades rather that they've been in food
crisis because of initially like the collapse of the Soviet
Union and then you know, still ongoing US trade embargoes
that have left Cuba in a bad state. So rice
(27:31):
and beans apparently is the sort of a symbol of
their determination as a people to get by.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Yeah. I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, and then
we can't not talk about Jamaica. Jamaica is its own
thing as far as rice and beans go. Not only
do they call their beans peas because remember their pigeon peas. Yeah,
they cook theirs like way differently from everybody else. They
simmer it in coconut milk. Huge difference is they cook
(27:58):
the rice and the beans together in one pot rather
than cooking them separately and bringing them together on the plate.
They also use different seasonings, So with red beans and rice,
it starts with the Holy trinity celery, onions and green
bell pepper, right, Jamaican holy trinity is time, garlic and scallions,
(28:19):
which I'm fine with both of those trinities, sure. And
then they also spice theirs up literally with all spice,
but also with Scotch bonnet peppers, which no human has
any business going anywhere near.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah, those are pretty spicy.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
And they that's I mean, like this is its own dish.
But you said it before. It was the Jamaican coat
of arms. It's just so common that you just have
that like every meal, from what I understand.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, for sure, I had almost every year here in
one of the neighborhoods near me in Kirkwood, they have
the Kirkwood Spring Fling and then they have the chicken
wing contest the Wing Fling, and my buddy Matt that
lives near us is the stuff. You should know. Guy
has gotten me to be one of the quote unquote
celebrity judges most years.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, and this year I had a Scotch bonnet wing.
That was the hottest thing I've ever put in my mouth.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, but it's not even close to like the hottest pepper.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
I know.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
It was unbelievably hot. It took twenty minutes for me
to even feel normal again.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
I'm sure it was bad. They're pretty though, That's the thing.
That's how they get you. You're like, wow, it's a
pretty pepper.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
I mean, this chicken wing was the color orange I've
never seen before.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Man, forget that. Yeah, I would have been like, well,
I'm not the celebrity judge anymore.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I guess should we take another break? Yeah, all right,
we'll be right back with why beans and rice is popular?
Right for this.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
You came and it was like, yeah, well we were
work pals.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
So chuck. We've been focusing mainly on the Caribbean, Latin America,
and Africa as far as like rice dishes go, right, Yeah,
and a little bit of the United States more the
southern area. Sure, there's like rice and bean dishes are
like so universally eaten by traditional cultures around the world
(30:32):
that there's actually an anthropologist name Sydney Mintz who's like,
I think this is actually one of the oldest dishes
humans make, and that it's been sustaining cultures around the
world for thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, he's he's got his own theory. It's called the core, fringe,
legome pattern, and it's those three things. He basically says
that in every culture in their diet, they have a
core grain involved. And as you can tell from our
rice episode and this one, like a lot of the time,
it's rice. It can be you know, other things depending
(31:08):
on where you are, but rice is definitely one of
the big ones. And then you have a legome to
complement that grain, in this case beans or peas. And
then you've got the fringe, right.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
The fringe this is fringe is in Surrey with the
fringe on top like a decoration, not a peripheral. Right, Yeah,
it's the sauceage. It's the seasonings, the herbs and spices
that make each rice or grain and bean dish unique
to a specific group or region.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, And he basically is like, this is this combination
of these three things. He calls it quote the basic
building blocks of world cuisine, and it's it's a very
just super ancient thing that's been around all over the
world forever.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I found that interesting that he makes a point though,
like it doesn't have to be rice, I think even
though half of the world gets there like eats rice
every day. Yeah, but there is like other kinds of
grains as well. Like have you ever had Ethiopian food? Uh?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, it's been a while.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
They have like these kind of pancake like bread, very
flat bread, and you put the food basically into that
and make like a little toastata or burrito or something
out of it essentially, or you can use it to
sop stuff up. But like that's their main grain, like
they I don't think you have a meal in Ethiopia
(32:38):
without that that bread. Do you know what it's called
in Jera in Jerra?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I think, so that sounds good. I need to eat food.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
It's been a while for me, but every time I've
had it, I I loved it. Yeah, And I mean
Ethiopia is just one place of many. There's a lot
of other places that also that do use rice as
the core grain that are nowhere near Latin America, the
Middle East. I believe in Persia they have a ton
of different beans and rice dishes. India has something called
(33:10):
rajma chawall, which I mean, it doesn't matter what it is.
If it's Indian food, I'll eat it and I love it.
But they have Rajma chawall would not exist without the
New World because they make it with red kidney beans yeah,
and tomatoes, both of which come from the New World.
And then they India up with basmati rice.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yeah for sure. Yeah, Indian food is not something I
would associate with red kidney beans, so I'll have to
try to soak that out for sure.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
And then Turkey has something. It's a staple called kuru
fasuli fasuli v pilav and it's a rice pea loof
with white bean stew, which sounds good too.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
I love white beans, like a white bean chili.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Yeah, But Sydney mint seems to be onto something though,
you know, like they rice and beans in particular seem
to be like all over the place. And anytimes something's
like that nearly universal. It's probably pretty.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Old, yeah, and probably fairly healthy, because if ancient cultures
are eating stuff for thousands of years, it's probably not
you know, junk food, right, and that's new you probably heard, like,
you know, if you eat rice and beans together it's
complete protein because they compliment one another and filling in
the blanks of what like the key amino acids that
(34:28):
the other is missing, and the amino acids are the
building blocks of protein. And it's not like that's not
one hundred percent true, but it's kind of true.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I've seen both. I've seen that. Yeah, essentially, it is
a complete protein if you put them both together.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
And eat enough.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
I feel like, yes, that's the key. I think if
you really want to nitpick, you can be like, well,
complete protein has one hundred percent of all of the
essential amino acids that you need. They're essential because your
body doesn't make them an abundant enough supply, so that
we have to get them from external sources. I eve
food and I think there's nine of them. Yeah, there's
(35:08):
nine of them. If you eat a steak or some
tuna or like a protein like that, bam, you're covered
and it doesn't take very much. The critique of rice
and beans as a complete protein is yes, if you
put them together, they contain enough of everything that if
you eat enough rice and beans, you'll have a complete protein.
(35:29):
I think the world generally is like no, that it's
a complete protein. Stop being a pedantic putts.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, if you have a cup of cooked pintos at
six ounces, it's about fifty percent of most amino acids,
but twenty seven percent of one called methionine. So that's
what's missing. On the bean side. A cook a cup
of cooked white rice provides about ten to twenty percent
of most of those amino acids and fourteen percent of
(35:57):
the methionine. But when you eat them together, and you
eat enough, and I think they say the ideal ratio
is about eighty percent rice dry protein to twenty percent bean.
It's basically a complete protein. You just have to eat
a little more. But low card people are like, why
would you do that when you can have a three
ounce steak and get all you need.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yeah, and the bees of rice people are like, why
would you kill an animal when you can eat rice
and beans.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
That's a good point. Did you ever eat it? The
grit in Athens before it closed? The vegetarian restaurant over
off Prince Avenue off downtown.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
It was not my place, but I ate there before.
I mean, I don't think you could live in Athens
at that time and not eat there.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Yeah, I think Michael Stipe might have been an owner
at one point or co owner or maybe an investor.
But they if you were a poor college student, which
was like you know, most of the people I knew
and me and myself were, could go to the grit
and get it was called the staple and it was
just white rice and beans with some spices, and it
(36:57):
was like three bucks or something, and we would eat
that a lot. It was a good way to get
a fairly healthy lunch in your body as a college
student for not much.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Whenever I think of rice and beans, I think of
this one man. I'm pretty sure he's a taxi driver,
and he was eating in a Cuban restaurant in New
York Upper East Side where Umi's and my friend Mollie lives,
and it was just around the corner from Molly's house
where we were staying in This guy, it was winter
and he just had this bowl of rice and beans
(37:27):
and he was eating it. He could have been he
was middle aged, he could have been a little kid,
he could have been an old man. The way he
was eating it. He was enjoying it. But it was
so so like clearly the consuming that dish was so
ingrained in this man that like it was its own thing.
(37:49):
Like you could have put anybody else in front of
that bowl, like me eating it, I would not have looked.
It wouldn't have been fluid, it wouldn't have been It
just looks so natural the way this man was. And
then at the same time you could see him being
like nourished by It was just cool. It drove home
to me, like just how big a deal rice and
(38:09):
beans are to a lot of the cultures where they
are a big deal. It is neat.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Oh that's cool. I love that. Yeah, I know what
you mean though, not even with rice and beans, but
when you see someone from the culture eating the thing
that kind of defines it and sustains their culture. Yeah,
it's different the way it goes down and the way
it looks. Yeah, it's like me and fried chicken.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Right, I'm trying to think of what I eat like that.
Maybe a donut.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Maybe someone from another country telling a story about visiting
America and seeing this guy eat fried chicken and his
friend was eating donuts, and.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah, uh, you can be nourished by beans. Though rice
is fine, depending on the kind of rice. Like the
problem with white rice is it has a high clistemic
index y, which I'm sure we talked about the rice episode,
but that basically means it jecks your insulin up while
you're dyeing it. What's cool is that when you eat
beans with white rice, the beans have such a low
(39:05):
glycemic index that it washes out a lot of the
white rice. Is glycymic index removes it. So that's pretty cool.
And then beans, of course are just on their own nutritious.
One of the big things that they have lots of fiber, Yeah,
which is the component of beans that make them the
magical fruit. Apparently you get more than half of your
(39:27):
daily fiber from one cup of pinto beans.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, that's a lot. They lower your LDL cholesterol, which
is the bad cholesterol. They're going to improve your gut
healthy if you have a risk of well, I guess
everyone has some risk of colorectal cancer.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's getting worse too.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, it's going to decrease that risk. And what else
there something about the like it fills you up right.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah. You are satiated by two different hormones that are
triggered by eating beans, which is cool. And you you
basically digest your food a little slower, so you feel
fuller longer.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Yeah, Like last night, not in prep for this, because
I didn't even bother making beans. We just been traveling
a lot. We have no food here, and I didn't
know what to eat, and I didn't feel like like
ordering delivery food because I hate doing that. So I
opened up a can of refried black beans and I
just cooked those and put some spices in them and
threw some cheese on top and ate a bowl of
(40:27):
refried beans.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
It was delicious. I farted all night long.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
You may eat three fried beans a surprising amount and
she does not fart.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Well, that's because you me is perfect and I'm not.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Oh dude, I'm right there with you, like I've been
holding it in from lunch the whole time you've been recording.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
She's a real lady.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
That's right. You got anything else about beans, rice, rice,
am beans?
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Nothing else? I think I'm gonna go on a rice
and beans terar. How about this? I would love if
people know a great recipe for that that traditional Mexican rice.
Send it in.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Oh good idea, It is so good. I swear to God,
there's lard isn't it?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Probably so, and it takes some time. You know, it's
not the kind of thing you can just whip up
in a second.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
Uh okay, sure, that's it depends if you're a Cuban
taxi driver in New York, I'll bet you could whip
it up in a second.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
This is a weird episode, Chuck, all right, I'll take that.
All right. Well, since Chuck's taken weird, that means he
just unlocked the listener mail.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
This was from our episode on postpartum depression that just
came out in real time. Hey guys, I just listened
to your PPD YP was inspired to write in I
want to thank you for shining a light on this
extremely difficult subject, specifically the parts in which you acknowledge
the uncomfortable, intrusive thoughts that some moms might experience. My
first time mom of a four month old have been
diagnosed with PPD and I'm getting all the treatments you
(41:59):
outlined it your episode, but it's still a lonely journey.
And your episode is a very succinct, accessible way to
inform people that support me in my life about what
I'm experiencing. So as a woman. I'm always second guessing
my feelings even when it comes to my PPD symptoms.
But the stats that you shared in the episode remind
me that this is very real and I'm not just
being dramatic. So as two CIS men, you did a
(42:22):
great job and keep doing good work. And that is
Rachel from Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Nice. Thank you very much Rachel for writing in to
tell us that, because that's exactly why we did that episode.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
You know, yeah, and we're you know, you're in our thoughts.
I know that's a very lonely place to be.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Yeah. Well, well, said Chuck. Hopefully listening to that episode
made people who are going through PPD feel a little
less lonely. Yeah, if you are going through PPD, or
you're doing something that has something to do with one
of our episodes, or like Chuck said, you have a
good recipe for Mexican rice, we want to hear from you.
(43:00):
If you don't have anything like that to say, that's fine,
email us. Send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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