Not sure why I've been dabbling in gluten free territory lately, I think it's the different set of physical and rheological properties that intrigues me about the building blocks involved.
Today's adventure is a snack food. The snack food literature (and there most definitely is a great deal of food science dedicated to the snack) has many wheat free snacks. When beans are used, the snack almost always involves a fraction of rice. This observation coupled with my bean-only experiments resulting in crackers that are too delicate, leads me to believe gelatinous over-cooked rice helps bind things together.
My most recent "chip" is a 1:1 mix of beans and rice with some added fat, salt and spice and baked. I've only made these a couple times and frankly may not do it again. They're a lot of work. I was more interested in watching the transformation of the beans and rice than I was in making anything novel or economical. And, after this, you won't flinch when you pay $4 for a bag of chips. Formation of the chip and baking was the most laborious part of the prep - this is where a continuous process and different equipment would be required for production.
Pinto beans (1/2 C, 100 g), basmati rice (1/2 C, 100 g), lard (24 g), salt (10 g), cumin (2T) and water (1 L) was charged to an 8 qt pressure cooker and cooked on high (ca. 15 psi) for 30 minutes. This leaves just enough water so no scorching happens and the overcooked rice and beans don't have to be removed from the water.
Then the hot mixture is pureed with an immersion blender. No sliced fingers!
Let the mixture cool completely, it'll be stiff and disgusting looking.
Place 3 ice cream scoops of the glop on a parchment paper, ca. 11" square.
Place a piece of plastic over the lumps and squash with a pan to a 6-7" disc. It squashes easily.
Squashed. The plastic will pull off easily IF the mixture is completely cooled.
Peel off the plastic and repeat on the other two lumps.
Score the discs with a pizza cutter and place the parchment and glop onto a sheet pan and bake at 350 about 30 minutes - there's a lot of water in this mush, that's why the long bake time.
They'll look tan to brown when done. Pull them off the parchment and when cool, break them apart along the lines you made with the pizza cutter.
Eat.
I've been wondering about using gabanzo flour instead of the rice. Do you think that will work - do I need to use a pressure cooker?
ReplyDeleteHey Jon! I'm not sure about the garbanzo flour or any bean flour - I'm just not sure if cooking it down from beans produces any different consistency than starting with the powdered bean (bean flour). I've used garbanzo bean flour (besan) for pasta and it's pretty granular, never affords any kind of extensibility. But give it a shot for sure. I know dosa are made from ground rice and ground lentil to make a batter that is fermented and then fried - so there's some precedent for the bean flour being a gloppy mess.
ReplyDeleteAlso, pressure cooker necessary? No, just cook the crap out of the mixture so it turns to mush, just watch that it doesn't scorch. Also realize, you can't use too much water because the resulting mush can't be filtered from the water and it still has to be baked - so if there's too much water, it'll take forever. The mix of beans and rice needs to finish cooking soft and as a thick slurry.
Were the beans already cooked when you started the process (as in from a can or pre-soaked)?
ReplyDeleteDiane, the beans were dry.
ReplyDelete