Leftover cooked kidney beans — tomorrow’s chilli

Cooked kidney beans sit in the cold after soup — soft, dark, already without their liquor. The hand reaches to warm them tomorrow in a bowl on their own. I do it differently: onion in quiet oil, tomato paste or chopped tomato, the beans on top, a pinch of cumin or pepper — ten minutes, and it is chilli in the pot, not a pale side.

Leftover cooked kidney beans — tomorrow’s chilli. Cooling pulses into a box is about cold after the boil; a tin on Wednesday is about skipping the soak; black beans between tortillas are about a quesadilla. Here kidney beans go into a thick chilli: tomato and heat, not yesterday’s soup again and not a packet of “chilli mix” from the rack.

That bowl is enough for two; if the beans are dry — a spoon of tomato or yesterday’s stock, I don’t thin them under the tap. A sour smell from the box — I don’t save that bowl into chilli. I’m not choosing a new bean grade for “proper chilli” here — only what is already cooked at ours.

I don’t need a bowl of beans beside something else. I need one pot of chilli for lunch. In your kitchen do kidney beans gather into chilli — or get warmed again in a separate bowl?