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Kidney Bean Salad (Can kidney beans Bermuda onion)
1 can kidney beans 1 Bermuda onion sliced 3 T vinegar 1 T sugar 1 t salt ⅛ t pepper 3 T of bacon drippings may be added Place the beans in a strainer and run cold water over them as this improves their appearance. Drain well and add the remainder of the ingredients. Serve on lettuce or shredded cabbage.
A three-minute pantry salad from the relish end of the book, and it still works exactly as written. The only real decisions are the amount of pepper and how long you let it sit.
- Can sizeA modern can of kidney beans is 15-16 oz, yielding about 1½ cups drained. That matches the dressing quantities here well enough; if you use a larger 28 oz can, roughly double the vinegar, sugar and salt.
- Pepper1½ teaspoons of pepper against 3 tablespoons of vinegar is a very aggressive ratio and will dominate everything else. Start with about ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon and taste before adding more.
- Bermuda onionA large, mild, flat-topped sweet onion, usually white or pale yellow. Any sweet onion (Vidalia, Walla Walla) or a red onion stands in; slice it thin and, if it is sharp, rinse the slices in cold water and pat dry.
- Why the rinse mattersCanned beans carry a starchy, murky packing liquid that clouds the dressing and dulls the color. Rinsing under cold water and draining thoroughly is the one step that makes this look like a salad rather than a scoop from a can.
- Bacon drippingsOptional in the original and worth including. Warm the drippings just enough to be pourable and whisk them into the vinegar; if they set solid on the cold beans, the salad turns waxy. Neutral oil is the substitute if you have none.
- Let it standNo resting time is given, but the beans absorb almost nothing in the first few minutes. Thirty minutes at room temperature, or an hour or two chilled, gives a noticeably better result.
- Yield and servingEnough for four as a side. The recipe directs that it be served on a leaf of lettuce or a bed of shredded cabbage rather than eaten from a bowl.
Salads built on canned beans and a sharp sweet-sour dressing turn up constantly in American church and community cookbooks of the first half of the twentieth century. The dressing is essentially a cold version of the hot bacon-and-vinegar treatment long associated with Pennsylvania German and Midwestern cooking. Canned kidney beans made such a dish possible at short notice, which is exactly the appeal for a cook contributing to a supper that has to feed a crowd from the pantry.