I must have seen these yellowish, creamy-colored Peruano beans at our local Mexican grocery stores a hundred times before I finally decided to look into them. My ignorance told me that they were probably really similar to pinto beans. In their bin next to those pintos and black beans they were just another bean; until we tried them. Never underestimate a bean as they all seem to have unique qualities. Nobody would ever confuse a lima bean with a garbanzo, while recipes that call for kidney beans wouldn’t be the same built on navy beans.

The recipe I use is out of the domain of pure comfort foods and as such is pretty indulgent. You might have read in my blog post about the corona beans that I started with 8 ounces of beans but those were giant and so half a pound looked like we’d have enough after they doubled in size. I didn’t trust that measure for these little guys so I went with 11 ounces. It turned out that I let my stomach do the decision making which was a mistake. From now on I’ll start with 8 ounces of dried beans unless I know I want leftovers.

By the way, Peruanos are also known as Mayocoba and canary beans should you go searching for these. So, with 11 ounces of beans soaked overnight, I fired up the crockpot early in the morning and tossed in a 32-ounce container of chicken broth. I drained and rinsed the beans, added them to the pot along with chopped onion, one clove of roughly chopped garlic, a small package of salt-pork, and some ham hock. I put the crock on high and cooked it this way until noon, about 3.5 hours when I turned it down low and let it continue to simmer until dinner time.

The result, while still incredibly yummy, was a bit flawed this go-round. Last time I made these I started with 1 pound of beans which made quite a difference in how these were salted. While I didn’t add any extra salt, the salt pork imparted its own decent amount that I’d say was on the verge of too much, next time I’ll know better. When the beans are done I remove the salt pork, maybe I should have done this at noon? I break up the meat that fell off the bones from hocks and serve it up. At another time in our lives I would have had tortillas or cornbread accompany the beans but tonight they were perfect. This foray into Beanistan was via Mexico.