Abandoned Edibles
Bob's Black Bean Soup Mix, leeks, yellow onion, parsnips, beef sticks
(additional ingredients: beef stock, garlic, carrots, potatoes, butter, olive oil, etc.)
What I did: okay, before ya'll get super weirded out, let me just say that this dish is not as nasty as it seems! Okay, so what I did was essentially make a black bean soup...with beef sticks. First, I roasted the root veggies in olive oil, butter, and spices. I boiled the bean soup mix in beef broth until they were nearly done, and then combined the two pots. I chopped up the onions and leeks, sauteed them, and added them to the mix. Lastly: the beef sticks. This poor lil' pack-o-beef was in the cull bin because they had been accidentally frozen, so the texture wasn't great as a 'snack'--but it was PERFECT for a stew! I removed the casing from each stick and cut them into smaller pieces, threw them in the pot, and let everything simmer until the beans were fully cooked.
The Verdict
You would be surprised how delicious and tasty this was. The beef sticks worked wonderfully with the black bean soup mix, and as a bonus, I had these perfectly round little cylindrical discs of beef suspended in my stew--how cute! (seriously, though, it WAS adorable). The only negative to this whole dish was the appearance, namely the color--the purplish/black hue from the beans and beef broth was somewhat....oh, what's the word?....yes...NASTY. Other that that: delicious!
Taste: 7.5
Creativity: 9
Appearance: 5
Improvements for next time: less beans, more beef! And somehow fix that purplish hue...how does one do that, by the way?
