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Cowboy Beans

A bean stew with pinto beans, ham hock, tomato paste, green chilies, and rice.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cowboy Beans

Time45 minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Cook onion in oil in large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat until onion is transparent.

  2. Add beans, ham hock, tomato paste, chiles, sugar, chili powder and water.

  3. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 45 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove ham hock; cut meat off bone and dice.

  2. Return meat to beans.

  3. Serve beans over rice.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beans + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pinto beans
Provide the main body and starchy bulk of the dish.
Tomato paste
Adds concentrated savory depth, color, and a little acidity to the broth.
Smoked ham hock
Contributes smoky, salty flavor and richness as it simmers into the beans.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks, forming the flavor base of the dish.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomato paste and chiles with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer uncovered for 45 minutes. Simmering uncovered lets liquid evaporate and the sauce thicken and concentrate. Boiling too hard can break up the beans, so keep the heat low enough for a gentle simmer.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, ham, tomato, sugar, rice):

  1. Okrabetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Sweet potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, ham, tomato, sugar, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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