What Makes These Beans Taste So Good? It’s The Lead

You know, and I know, that there’s nothing quite as yummy as beans cooked in a jarro, or earthen pottery. I think we both know, also, that it’s because of the lead. You know, that silver stuff that only leaks out of it when you cook in the pots, shining over the top and the sides of your jarro. But, hey, if it’s that lead that makes the beans taste so good, small price to pay, no?

I was cooking up a yummy pot of pinto beans today when I noticed the silver stuff leeching out of the top of the jarro I bought when I was living in Mexico. I have two other jarros, both belonged to my grandfather, and as I was thinking this it occurred to me that over the years I probably have eaten a lot of lead from these pots! And yet — no brain damage!

Is this like another one of those conspiracies, like in my youth, when they tried to say the chile candy from Mexico was filled with lead and we were all going to die from it? I don’t know, but what I will say is that I am very reluctant to give up eating the beans from my abuelito’s jarros. He ate from jarros his whole 80 years and, when he did die, it wasn’t from lead poisoning.

In all seriousness, sometimes I do get a little worried about that lead, but then I remember that we live in a world of constant contamination. Smog, second-hand smoke, E. coli outbreaks, plastic leeching into our water, hormones in municipal drinking water, etc. I think about all these potential pollutants, weighed against the consumption of more lead with my beans, and suddenly I’m not so worried.

Darn it all, if a little lead in my beans gives me the feeling that I can still be close to my abuelito while downing some yummy beans, let’s do it. I could do a lot worse in my daily life anyway.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD