Mama'S Red Beans & Rice - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1 lb dried kidney beans
2 cups water (more accurately, enough to cover plus 1-2 inches)
2 tablespoons fat (for frying, I prefer to render ham fat or bacon fat for this dish)
1 lb andouille sausage, cut into bite size medallions
3 carrots, diced
3 celery ribs, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 smoked ham hocks
1 meaty ham bone
8 cups water (more or less, cover the ham hocks, bones, and veggies)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 teaspoons paprika (or 1 teaspoon paprika and 1 teaspoon smoked paprika)
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper
3 -4 cups cooked rice
red pepper hot sauce

Preparation

Speed soak kidney beans by covering with water and bringing to rolling boil for 2-5 minutes. Cover, remove from heat, and let sit for an hour.
Render fat from bacon or ham to coat bottom of dutch oven OR use about 2 Tabelspoons oil to brown andouille sausage.
Once sausage is browned, remove from pan and set aside.
In fat left over from sausage, saute onions, celery, carrots, and bell pepper until translucent and beginning to brown scraping up the fond from the sausage.
Add the garlic and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes. DO NOT let the garlic burn!
Add ham hocks and ham bone to the pot and cover with water.
Bring to boil and simmer, covered, for 2 hours.
Mix together in small bowl salt, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, cayenne pepper, oregano, thyme, and paprika; set aside.
Once ham is falling off the bone and ham hocks are beginning to fall apart, remove about 2 cups of water/stock from the pot.
Remove the bones and return the meat to the pot.
Drain what liquid is left from the beans and dump beans into the ham and stock mixture.
Dump browned andouille sausage into ham, bean, and stock mixture.
Add spice mixture and bay leaves to the pot and mix in well.
Cover and simmer for 1-2 hours.
While simmering the beans, cook your favorite rice. You'll need at least 3-4 cups. My family really likes rice so I usually double that.
Remove the bay leaves and any bone or skin pieces from ham hock.
When ready to eat, if there still seems to be too much liquid on the beans, just ladle the excess liquid off. (I find that some days are just more humid and there's a lot of liquid, and some days there's hardly any.).
Serve meaty bean mixture over the top of hot rice.
If desired, use some good hot sauce on top. Enjoy!