I have made this twice now. Once on the stovetop and once in a slow cooker. I loved the recipe but did not like using canned beans when dry beans taste better, are cheaper and so easy to make. Besides I'm Cuban and my mother would disown me if I used canned beans. That's like an Italian serving canned spaghettios for a special occasion. It's just not done. I soak a bag of red beans according to package directions. I've used small and kidney beans. I use the smallest bag size (1 pound I believe). I soak according to directions with only 1 variation. I only drain 1/2 of the soaking water and replace the water I removed with fresh water. I don't puree anything. I brown the meat, onions and green pepper then put in all the ingredients except the potatoes. Cooked the beans according to package directions and put the potatoes in at the end so that they wouldn't get mushy. Used butternut squash. No pumpkin available. Keeping with Cuban tradition, I had to add 6 slices of bacon cooked and chopped along with 2T of the bacon renderings. I also added 3 or 4 thumb size spanish chorizo sausage (NOT MEXICAN CHORIZO please). I peeled off the sausage casing and diced the sausage. I use exactly 8 packets of Sazon Goya instead of achiote powder. I used Sazon Goya's achiote version one time and the saffron flavor the 2nd. Both good. Since there are more beans than in the one can used in original recipe, I tripled up on the amount of veggies and meat. However, I only used one large green pepper.

Reviewed On: Jul. 15, 2011

I did not have ground venison so I used ground beef instead. Otherwise I thought it was very good and I will make it again.

Reviewed On: Mar. 24, 2006