On a positively sour note…

I was doing a routine check of the use-by dates on the packaged food in the pantry when I came upon several cans of Holiday Vienna sausage. It’s a popular local brand, if not with us. How did they get there? My sister was in town lately after a long absence and understandably nostalgic for the local food, but surely not that nostalgic.

The other item was green beans, also canned. This was more puzzling. It’s not like green beans aren’t available year-round at the local market (where they are commonly known as Baguio beans). Curious, I opened the can and took a bite.

Holy mother of God. If this was the kind of vegetable I would be having when doomsday finally comes, I wouldn’t bother to stock up — I would welcome the Apocalypse with open arms. I like green beans, just so you know, even if I have never really thought it deserving to be the star of a dish. For that we use yard(long) beans.

But we were out of those when I came upon J. Kenji López-Alt’s recipe for bacon braised beans. It called for cooking them for up to 45 minutes — an eternity (not to mention a sacrilege) when it comes to cooking greens, and yet he had insisted that the beans would retain their crunch after all that time. Who was I to doubt him?

Like I said with the reverse-seared pork chops, any recipe of his always gets me excited. For this one, he takes advantage of the less-known fact that vinegar retards the mush factor in yard bean, particularly by raising its pH level, i.e., acidity (if you remember high-school chemistry, each whole pH value lower than 7 (neutral) is ten times more acidic than the next lower whole value, 0 being most acidic). Vinegar is a very common condiment. Have you ever considered it can do anything more than make food sour? Me neither.

But it’s nice to know, no? I mean, do those beans even look like they’ve been cooked for three quarters of an hour? The technique works with other vegetables as well, you only have to trust Kenji enough to try (this list may come in handy). What’s there to lose? As far as I know, a little vinegar never did anyone any harm. For that, try canned Vienna sausage. Libby’s, if you please.