Ham hock and Bean dilemma?!
Answers: I started cooking raw beans (that had been soaked over night until large) and raw ham hocks with cooked onions, bay leaves, and garlic at 6pm..and my beans are already done..it's 7:44pm! But I heard ham hocks take like 3-4 hours..so what do I do now?! I don't want my beans all mooshy and I don't want to eat a dish of raw hocks either!
Your hocks aren't raw, they come smoked, so you should be just fine. :-)
You should have just let the dried beans simmer with the hocks all afternoon. However, just take the hocks out of the beans and let them simmer for a couple of hours tonight in a separate pot and then turn the heat off and let it rest. After cool in the morning, take out the hocks, separate the meat and chop up the wonderful skin. Put back into the bean pot with the hock simmering juice. It'll be fine-for tomorrows lunch or dinner.
Of course, make sure you make a pan of corn bread. I like to just a bug slab of corn bread, ladle a heap of beans on top, and add a couple of spoonfuls of raw onion.
[Oh man, I'm drooling right now!] I know what I'm making this weekend!
One hint: Never let any food
sit in a pot overnight, refrigerated or unrefrigerated.
Some people trust stainless
steel, I don't. At the very least, it will give the food an off-taste.
Another hint: When you buy
stainless steel made in China,
it says do not scour pot inside
(for a reason). the "stainless"
is so thin you can scour it off easily. I haven't figured out
what the metal is underneath, but when I lick it,
it sure tastes funny.