I went over to New Brunswick to a Mexican grocery because I needed blue corn tortillas.
While I was there I noticed that they had fresh Epazote – I had to buy a bunch because I haven’t seen the fresh stuff in months, although I’ve cooked recipes that call for it.
Naturally the classic use is in bean dishes – but I was wondering, do you guys ever use the stuff? Do you have specific recipes?
If you don’t know it, it smells vaguely like gasoline (maybe I should soak some in a glass of Riesling?) and it is supposed to cut down on gassiness when you eat it with beans.
I haven’t cooked much Mexican food in general. I have used dried epazote in the tomato sauce for chilies rellenos because the traditional recipe (using reconstituted dried chilies which are way better than fresh) is pretty bare bones. The note of epazote livens things up and says “this is Mexican”.
Interesting that people mainly seem to use the dried stuff – Googling around on this subject it seems that if you try both you will want to use fresh instead – like, say, with mint, or tarragon.
I made a black bean recipe that really tasted great last night. Vegetarian so I could feed my son and his girlfriend. It can either be served as a soup or a solid, I spooned out the beans and served with white rice as in Moros y Cristianos.
Soup
1 pound Black Beans
2 tablespoons Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
2 Onions, large, diced
6 cloves Garlic, minced
1 cup Tomato, peeled, seeded, and chopped (fresh or canned)
1 teaspoon Epazote, fresh or dried
1 teaspoon Cumin, ground
1 teaspoon Coriander, ground
2 teaspoons Salt
1 tablespoon Chipotle Chiles, canned, chopped
OR
1/4 teaspoon Cayenne
You pre soak the beans, then fry up the onions and garlic and add the beans to the pan. After everything is sizzling, add water (I used the black soaking water plus some fresh water) and simmer for an hour. I put in a touch of Sazon Goya, which has some MSG in it, to compensate for the meatlessness. As the beans are getting soft add the remaining ingredients and cook until tender.
I used the Chipotle Chiles in Adobo sauce, in the small can, and at first I was convinced I had used too much. I fished out 2 peppers, got rid of some of the seeds, and chopped them up in their adobo sauce and added. But as it cooked the hotness abated a little.
Anyway I highly recommend this recipe, Tom’s girlfriend who spent a year or so in Mexico said that the aromas were VERY Mexican, the smoky aroma of the chipotles and the “gas station” scent of the epazote gives the dish a real “terroir.” And I don’t know if it SOUNDS as good as it is but I really could not stop having another “taste” and another and another. Of course dried epazote would work just fine in this dish.
The recipe online calls for fresh salsa to be served with the soup. I laid out a platter with soft blue tortillas, crisp yellow tortillas, cut pepper jack cheese, sliced tomatillos, a bowl of salsa, and a few fresh epazote leaves. Everything disappeared…
I used to use it. We had it growing in the yard when I lived in Fresno. I stopped using it, though, when I started doing my Brett research. To me it smelled like the Band-aid variety of Brett, and it kind of turned me off.
I know exactly what you mean. I used to like the sweet smell of diethyl ether. Then I had to use it on rats to get blood samples. Now I can’t smell ether without smelling the rat poop – which I know isn’t there. My brain sees it as implied, so the clean sweet smell is gone for me forever.
I’m kind of struggling to pin down the familiarity of the smell of epazote. It is NOT gasoline. It is a smell from gas stations in the 1950’s, something about the smell of a lube job, something that was in the air. At any rate I smell it and I’m a kid in a gas station. But I don’t know exactly what the kid is smelling. Fortunately it’s a good smell for me, and even better with the beans.
Is it true that epazote ameliorates the gaseous side-effects of beans?
I like the smell of epazote, as it reminds me of the hills above my childhood home above the Pacific coast (Pacific Palisades) where it grows wild. It smells more like diesel (oily) than gasoline.
All I know is that it is “commonly believed” to prevent flatulence, and that is one reason it is so often cooked with beans. It also gets a little toxic at high concentrations so you wouldn’t want to boil up a pot of epazote and eat it like spinach.
I agree about the diesel-oily smell, maybe it smells more like an oil change than a gasoline fill-up.