This is another sort-of “use up all that stuff that’s been lying around” recipe. I had seitan in the freezer that needed to be used, dried pink beans that had been sitting around forever, a bell pepper on its last legs, and the ends of tomatoes that didn’t fit nicely on a sandwich. So…pink beans and rice.

Pink Beans and Rice

(I didn’t take a picture of all the ingredients beforehand, but here are many of them lined up after being prepped.)

2 cups cooked pink beans
2 dried chipotle peppers
1 onion, chopped
1 green or red bell pepper (I’d have preferred green but only had red)
6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
3/4 pound seitan, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
1 6 oz can tomato sauce
1 cup water or vegan broth (you’ll probably need to add some salt if you use water)
2 packets Goya ham flavoring (it’s vegan!)
1/2 tsp liquid smoke
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped, or if you are like me and never have cilantro when you need it, 3-4 cubes frozen cilantro (Trader Joe’s sells this)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp (or to taste) chipolte powder
4 cups cooked rice

Cook the beans with the dried chipotles; a pressure cooker makes this easy. Drain.

Bring some olive oil up to temperature over medium heat in a large, heavy pot. Add the onions and cook until very soft.

Add the bell pepper and garlic and cook another minute or two.

Add the seitan and cook about 5 minutes.

Add the rest of the ingredients and stir.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for half an hour or until thickened.

Stir in the rice and warm through.

Serve.

This was quite good but Mark picked out all the seitan and ate around it because he said it was “mushy”. What I should have done was fry it separately before mixing it in because by the time I added it to the pot and sauted it, it was too liquidy in there for the seitain to brown. This may not be a problem if you are using a less-tender seitan, but Kittee’s Gluten Log is very tender and meant to be well-cooked after steaming. You could also simply eliminate the seitan: the dish is hearty enough as just beans and rice.