Ultimate BBQ Red Beans and Rice

There’s something comforting about the velvety fatty consistency of perfectly cooked rice and beans. I’ve had many versions in my travels around the world including Puerto Rican Arroz Con Grandules, Korean Kongbap, and Louisiana Creole Red Beans and Rice. Whatever the iteration, they’re all wonderful when properly executed.

I know I risk blasphemy when I confess that my gold standard for rice and beans is from the Popeyes fried chicken fast food chain. Not any Popeyes, mind you, but the one in East Los Angeles near where I work located next to the Kaiser Hospital where their high-volume turnover keeps the crew on their toes to produce the most consistent fried chicken. Their red beans and rice surpass all the many other Popeye’s places I’ve tried. And if you don’t believe me, sample it yourself when you’re in the area. The Red Beans and Rice served at the East LA’s Popeyes has the perfect combination of smoky peppery goodness with a Goldilocks combination of rice, beans, and liquid that makes it my favorite side dish to eat with fried chicken.

If you’ve tried to make rice and beans yourself, you’ll soon realize, as I did, that it’s not easy to make a superb rendition of this deceptively simple dish. So, when I set out to create the Ultimate BBQ Red Beans and Rice, I asked myself what made my gold standard benchmark so special. In my opinion, the perfect rice and beans dish should have a combination of whole and crushed beans, flavorful meaty gravy, sufficient smokiness, peppery and cayenne heat, and perfect liquidity and bean consistency.
I believe that I’ve succeeded, and my version is a huge one-up on the Popeyes. The Holy Trinity of green bell pepper, onions, and celery adds a lot of flavor. The bay leaf and thyme provide aromatics. For the meaty goodness, I added ham hock broth with bits of shredded meat and fatty collagen. The ham hock was smoked in my Weber Smokey Mountain pit with hickory and apple wood chunks to add another flavor dimension to the meat and the dish was cooked in a Dutch oven in a barbecue pit.

I cook a lot of barbecue, especially pork and brisket, for 10+ hours so tossing a package of Walmart ham hocks and a cast iron pot of beans in my WSM was an effortless no brainer. Voila, when my long-haul meats were cooked, I had a tasty side dish ready also. I made some Uncle Ben’s converted rice (out of convenience) and topped it off with sliced scallions.
In my Ultimate version, the dish looks much more appealing–more whole beans, subtle visible fragments of holy trinity, and tiny bits of ham hock meat. Smoking the ham hocks again added volumes more smoke which is good as I didn’t want to use liquid smoke which I suspect was in the Popeye’s version.
Read on for the recipe details such as how to cook the beans in your pit so that they are not too starchy and not dissolved as much as Popeyes. The key is to cook them just the right amount of time to get the fat and gelatin out of the hocks, evaporate the water, and to get all the starchiness out of the beans, without over cooking them. In my recipe, you actually smoke the water the beans are immersed in so the liquid is smoky – sort of like slow crock pot beans in the pit.
In summary, smoke the ham hocks first and smoke the liquid the beans are in. Take the little nuggets of meat of each ham hock before disposing, mince it up, and disperse it back in with the beans.