Gallo Pinto

The rice and beans eaten at almost every meal from Costa Rica to Nicaragua, yesterday's rice fried through black beans and their inky cooking liquor until speckled

Origin: Costa Rica and Nicaragua

From the journey of Beans.

Gallo pinto means spotted rooster, for the speckled look of white rice flecked through with black or red beans. It is breakfast in both Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and lunch and dinner besides, and both countries claim it with some heat. Costa Rica uses black beans and a shot of Salsa Lizano, the tamarind-tinged brown sauce that is a national fixation; Nicaragua uses small red beans and skips the sauce. Neither will concede. The technique is a leftovers technique and that is the point. Cold cooked rice from the day before is fried through beans and, crucially, a ladle of the dark liquor they cooked in, which stains the grains and carries most of the flavour. Fresh rice turns to mush; day-old rice keeps its grain. It is served with fried plantain, soft scrambled eggs, sour cream, and a wedge of fresh cheese. Behind it sits the oldest agricultural partnership in the Americas. Maize, beans, and squash were domesticated together in Mesoamerica and grown together in the same field, the beans fixing nitrogen and climbing the maize, and the maize-and-bean pairing supplies between them the amino acids that neither has alone. Rice arrived with the Spanish and slotted into the bean half of a very old arrangement.

Ingredients

Beans

  • 400 g cooked black beans, plus 150 ml of their cooking liquor

Rice

  • 600 g cold cooked long-grain rice, from the day before

Aromatics

  • 1 large onion, finely chopped
  • 1 red pepper, finely diced
  • 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

Fat

  • 3 tbsp neutral oil

To finish

  • 3 tbsp coriander leaf, chopped
  • 2 tbsp Salsa Lizano, or Worcestershire sauce, optional

Seasoning

  • 1 tsp salt, to taste

Method

  1. Cook the rice the day before, spread it on a tray to cool quickly, and refrigerate uncovered overnight.
  2. Soften the onion and red pepper in the oil over a medium heat for eight minutes, then add the garlic for one minute more.
  3. Add the beans with about 150 ml of their black cooking liquor and simmer for three or four minutes until the liquid has reduced by half and gone glossy.
  4. Break up the cold rice with your fingers and add it to the pan. Fold rather than stir, lifting from the bottom, until every grain is coated and stained.
  5. Fry for five to eight minutes over a medium heat, letting it catch very slightly on the base between turns.
  6. Stir in the coriander and, if you are making it the Costa Rican way, the Salsa Lizano. Taste for salt.
  7. Serve hot with fried sweet plantain, soft scrambled eggs, sour cream, and fresh cheese.

Notes

Beans cooked from dry give you the black liquor the dish needs. Tinned beans work but the liquid is thinner and the colour weaker; reduce it harder. Costa Rica uses black beans, Nicaragua small red. The argument over which is correct is old and unwinnable. Salsa Lizano is sold online and by Latin grocers, and Costa Ricans abroad have it posted to them. Vegan as written if the eggs, cream, and cheese are left off, which is how it is eaten as often as not.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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