Snacking State-by-State Mashup 8: Slow Cooked Green Chile Tomato Sauce Beans with Pine Nuts

What can one do with a few stray pieces of salt pork, a handful of pine nuts, some leftover green chile sauce and some slices of pork roll?  Throw them into a crock pot with some beans and tomato sauce, that's what.

The mashup recipe: Slow Cooked Green Chile Tomato Sauce Beans with Pine Nuts

Makes 4 to 6 servings as a main dish, 8 to 12 as a side

Ingredients (state flag indicates State-by-State post where ingredient was featured. Ingredients with no flag were not specifically used for any one post.)

1/2 lb northern beans, soaked overnight

3 oz salt pork

2 slices pork roll (Taylor ham)

2 to 3 T pine nuts

1/2 to 1 cup New Mexican green chile sauce (or chopped New Mexican green chiles)

2 c basic tomato sauce (actually, this was not the sauce I made for this recipe but some extra I had in the freezer.  I figured why not just use it now?)

juice of 1/2 lime

1 shot tequila (for the beans, not for you)

grated pecorino romano to taste

2 cloves garlic


1/4 onion (chopped)

After soaking the beans, place them in the slow cooker.

Add the chopped onion...

...the garlic and pine nuts...

...and the salt pork.

Cut the pork roll into little squares...

...and add them to the slow cooker.

Add the green chile sauce...

...the lime juice...

...the tequila...

...and the tomato sauce.

Barely cover the whole thing with water.

Set the slow cooker for four hours...

...on HIGH setting.

Four hours later, you have this.

This is pretty easy, and very filling.  The beans turned out lovely, though I would have loved to add more green chile sauce (I was saving some for an enchilada and ran out).  Also, I would have liked a stronger tequila taste, though I didn't expect it.  It does smell a little like lime and tequila the next day - faint, but distinct.  You can hardly taste the pine nuts, so I think that ended up being a waste of something expeisnve I could have used in something else.

Overall really, it's not easy to screw up beans in a slow cooker.  This is lovely with the grated cheese that just melts with the heat of the beans (and that I forgot to add in the photo).