Approximately 1,001 bean-related articles came out over the past few years. Topics included which dried beans were optimal to order online in packages you'd wipe down with antiseptic upon arrival, in what way to soak said beans for hours whilst trapped in your own home, and how to then cook those beans in the best possible manner so that the eating of them might momentarily stave off your feeling of impending doom. Now, at last, all of our sourdough starters are dead, and we've got stockpiles of beans looking at us with their millions of beady little eyes from the cupboard. It's beautiful!
Several recipes for The Best-Ever Beans that I tried out during the pandemic turned out sturdily good — a fine side dish or light supper, nothing superlative about them. Leaving beans behind for a bit seemed all right, cupboard side-eye notwithstanding.
Then our friends Bradley and Gillian had us over for dinner (the joy, still!), and Bradley made beans, and they were, truly, The Best Beans Ever. These were main-dish-dinner-party-worthy beans: Richly savory, they were somehow possessed of both a deeply satisfying simplicity and, if you thought about the beans while engulfing them, a little tantalizing complexity. These beans had an I-AM-COMPELLED-TO-EAT-THESE-BEANS quality that seems rare among beans.
