Red beans and rice is a staple of southern Louisiana cuisine. It originally was the dish for Monday washday. Beans garlic onions bell pepper celery and a couple of bay leaves along with the leftover ham bone from Sunday dinner we're putting a big pot and allow to simmer all day. It was often served with sausage and was served over rice allowing a healthy filling cheap meal. These people were poor, they still are poor and inexpensive feeling meals were needed.
Red beans and rice take a long time to cook. Beans are usually soak overnight and then slowly simmered for number of hours before the dishes ready. Pre-cooked canned beans just don't taste the same.
For the first cook in my electric pressure cooker I made red beans and rice starting from scratch in just under an hour. Put water in the pressure cooker and turned on sautéed to heat the water while I cut up the veggies. After cutting up the onions celery and red bell pepper I put them along with rinsed 1 pound of red beans in the pot. A couple of Bay leaves and five or six cloves of minced garlic were put in the pot also. 2 tablespoons of canola oil were put to prevent foaming by the beans and some initial salt-and-pepper.
The pressure cooker part was put on came to tip within 10 minutes possibly due to the pre heating and allowed to cook for the suggested 35 minutes. 1 pound of smoked pork sausage was Put in then put in the pressure cooker for an additional five minutes. Heat was turned down to simmer and the needed Cajun spice black pepper salt and some Louisiana hot sauce was used to season the Beans. Serve over rice it was really pretty good , next time I might cook the beans about five minutes longer during inital cook
