I wonder why it’s called Hoppin’ John

Time:  2 hours 33 Minutes (excluding bean soaking for 16 hours)

Ingredient Availability: 4/5

Difficulty: 1/5

I hadn’t heard of Hoppin’ John before seeing it in this Rodney Scott’s Cookbook. Just looking at it kinda reminds me of Jamaican/ Caribbean rice and peas, which I usually enjoy. I expect this recipe to have some sort of southern twist, which may come from the smoked pulled pork that’s incorporated into it. Anyway, rice and beans should be pretty a satisfying meal, at least.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

This is another one of Rodney’s recipes where he calls for a specific brand of an ingredient. In this case, it may be made even worse because it’s a specific brand of a relatively obscure bean and rice. Lucky for me, I was able to find the South Carolina Gold rice and Sea Island Red Peas at my nearest Whole Foods. Maybe these two ingredients are more common than I’m making it out to be, but I doubt you’d be able to find them at the average grocery store. Besides those two things, the rest of the ingredients are fairly easy to come by. I decided to make my own pulled pork, which is what’s in the butcher paper. However, you can use bacon or store/restaurant bought pulled pork instead (as long as it’s smoked).

Tools:

• Dutch oven

Cooking Review:

Bean Prep: 17 minutes

After soaking my beans overnight for a total of 16 hours, I preheated my oven and chopped my garlic and onion. I also took this time to mix the ingredients for the Hog Seasoning. I made a half batch of the seasoning, as I really didn’t plan on using it for anything besides this recipe. That may sound like a waste, but I’m sure I’ll end up using it on something sooner or later.

Cook onions and Garlic: 11 minutes

I let a stick of butter melt in a dutch oven over medium heat and added the garlic and onions. I ended up cooking the onions and garlic for  just 6 minutes instead of the 10+ suggested by the recipe, as I was beginning to get some color (the recipe was just aiming for translucency).

Baking: 1 Hour 40 minutes

I added pork to the dutch oven and let it cook for about 3 minutes before adding the beans, 1/2 tsp of hog seasoning, and chicken broth. After stirring everything together, I transferred it to the oven and baked it for about an hour and a half. The beans were more soupy than I was expecting, which is why I let it go for longer, despite the beans being pretty tender at just over an hour. Once they were done, I stirred in the salt.

Rice Prep: 2 minutes

The prep for the rice was very similar to the beans, but since it was just chopping half an onion, it went much faster. I started this step near the end of the beans cooking.

Cooking Rice: 32 minutes

After melting the butter in a pot and cooking the onion for about 5 minutes, I added some salt along with the rice and water. I brought it to a boil, which took about 7 minutes over medium heat. Then, I removed it from the heat and covered with a lid to steam for 16 minutes. The recipe was pretty much complete at this point.

Analysis:

Each element separately is pretty underwhelming. The beans really lack much flavor or complexity on their own. I sort of predicted this, as there’s only 1/2 tsp of the hog seasoning cooked into the beans and all the salt is added after the beans are done cooking, so they don’t soak up much seasoning. This leaves the beans getting most of the flavor from whatever broth or stock you use once the salt is added. The rice is just flavored with salt, butter, and onions. It’s a solid combination, but nothing special. When combined, things do improve. Somehow, the flavors become a little deeper and complex, but just a little. The somewhat soupy beans combine with the rice, which was ever so slightly undercooked by the steaming method, to become less soupy and more flavorful. I think it’s kind of a shame that this recipe just uses a 1/2 tsp of the hog seasoning, which I’m sure could’ve imparted a lot more flavor to the beans. Plus, not many other recipes in this book use that seasoning, so some people just might be stuck with a bunch of extra seasoning. If you ask me, you could probably just add all the salt before you transfer the beans to the oven, skip the hog seasoning entirely, and it’ll probably come out better. All of this isn’t to say that the dish is bland. I just feel like given what’s here, it could’ve been better. More of a missed opportunity. The pulled pork hardly contributes (which could just be due to how I cooked it), but I suppose it’s nice to have some meaty bites here and there. I’m going to give this a 7/10. I know it may seem high given the lack of praise, but it’s really not a bad recipe. It’s just underwhelming.