Summery Vegan Rice & Beans

Hello, friends! Happy Monday! I hope that you had an amazing weekend. I am so excited to share this easy, delicious vegan rice and beans recipe with you today. If you love rice and beans, you’re going to love this recipe — even if you are a meat eater, I promise. It is so flavorful and filling that it will leave anybody satisfied. But before I get to the recipe, let me share a few thoughts.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to stop ordering take-out and to stop dining out regularly. My goal right now is to make it until the end of August without dining out or stopping at a drive-thru. It’s going to be a challenge! Over the last year, I’ve come to rely on the convenience of the drive-thru and the pizzeria far too often. However, now that I am (almost) settled into my new place, I am no longer allowing myself to make excuses!

Meal-planning and cooking at home is cheaper than dining out. It’s healthier than dining out. And it gives you so much more control than dining out. The control part of it is very important for me right now because I am feeding two growing little ones. They are so picky and it’s far too easy to default to pizza and french fries — but I refuse to go down that path with them. The eating habits that they adopt now, even at this young age, will shape their entire nutritional future.

With all of that said, you will see me sharing a lot more recipes here in the near future. So get ready! I’ve probably done more cooking in the last two weeks than I have in the last year — and I am so excited to share all of it with you. First up on my list of staples is rice and beans. My little ones absolutely love rice and beans. It’s one of their favorites and Marina, especially, will eat it by the bucketful.

Preparing it this way makes it not only delicious, but also incredibly nutritious. I call this recipe “Summery” Rice & Beans because you can really shred in any fresh summertime vegetables that you have on hand. This time around I’ve used carrots and zucchini, but you can really add any vegetable that you love. Read on for the ingredients and directions.

Ingredients:

• extra virgin olive oil
• jasmine rice (we love this kind)
• 2 cans of black beans
• 2 medium carrots
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 1 medium onion
• 1 small zucchini

First, clean your carrot and zucchini. Next peel your carrot. Then shred both vegetables. Next clean your garlic and onion and dice into small pieces. Heat a large pan and coat generously with olive oil. Once pan is heated, add in all vegetables. Simmer until vegetables are tender.

In a separate pot, cook jasmine rice according to package directions. Secret tip: I always add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt (to taste) to the rice water. This make the rice more flavorful and delicious!

While you’re rice is cooking, add the black beans to the vegetable mixture. Do not rinse the beans, add the entire can, including liquid. Simmer everything over low heat until your rice is cooked. You can let your beans and vegetables simmer as long as you like, typically the longer it simmers, the more flavorful it will be. Keep a close eye on it so that your vegetables don’t turn soggy.

Et voilà! That’s it. When your rice is ready you can serve the beans over the rice right away. Also, this is one of those recipes that somehow gets even better after it’s been stored overnight — so enjoy the leftovers, too!

As you can see, this rice and beans recipe has Marina’s stamp of approval! 😉

I hope that you’ll love this recipe as much as we do, friends. Enjoy! You can check out more of our favorite recipes right here.