Beans, beans they’re good for your heart. The more you eat, the more you … ummmm … eat…?!
BEANS! They’re the best! (And sometimes the worst). Know what I’m saying?
In preparing some recipes for the website I found some new information that has completely changed how I prepare my beans!
I’ve always been a canned bean kind of girl. I’m not talking about beans in tomato sauce, or molasses with some nasty, jellied piece of pork fat floating in it. I’m talking about kidney, garbanzo (chick peas), black beans, etc… . However, after becoming more financially conscious and determined to get my grocery budget down a little bit I started using dried beans. The only bummer is the forethought required. I’d usually decide what I wanted for dinner; realize I didn’t have any cooked beans; go out and buy a can of beans. Or put that dinner on hold until the next night - and by that time I would have forgotten.
So, I only recently (May 2017) found a really interesting article about not soaking your beans before you cook them. WHAT? It always seemed to me that if you didn’t soak the beans they were basically unusable.
Not so.
Here is the article from the LA Times that opened my eyes http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-dont-soak-dried-beans-20140911-story.html
The author also addresses why beans can cause intestinal discomfort (farting) for some people. The conclusion: the more beans you eat over time, the less you will fart. Yay beans!!
Being naturally skeptical, but interested in new techniques I decided to give it a try and It. Was. Great!
I boiled a pot of water, dropped in my beans, and simmered the whole pot until they were done. I did this with chickpeas and kidney beans and had great results with both!
It’s easy, but takes a bit of time since you can’t really leave pots on the stove and walk the dog or mow the lawn, etc….
Different beans take more or less time to cook. If your beans are older they’ll take more time to soften up. You basically need to be around to keep checking on them; however, it’s still easy and is doable the day you want to have some delicious and healthy beans!
Here is what I did when I cooked my kidney and chickpeas:
Fill a large pot with enough water to cover the beans after they’ve expanded. Just eyeball this. You can always add more water if you need to.
Bring water to a boil.
Check your beans before you put them in the pot. Throw away shriveled or gross looking beans. These will NOT taste better after cooking.
Dump in beans. (Don’t mix bean types when cooking - the freshness and type of bean will require more or less cooking time. Once they’re all cooked - mix away!)
Drop the heat to simmer, put the cover on and let the heat and water do it’s thing.
Check the beans after 45 minutes. If you need more water add some.
Taste a few beans. If they’re hard: keep simmering. You want a soft consistency, but not disintegrating. Keep tasting until they have the ‘mouth feel’ you’re going for.
My chickpeas took about 1hr 15mins to finish cooking. My kidney beans took about 2 hours. (They were kind of old).
Have a pressure cooker? Dust it off because you can cook your beans in a lot less time if you use it. Here's a really helpful article about the process: http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-cook-beans-in-a-stovetop-pressure-cooker-193867
I filled the pressure cooker; dumped in the beans; brought the water to a boil; boiled beans for 4 minutes; turned off the heat, but left the pot on the element; allowed the pot to release pressure; had fully cooked dried beans in less than an hour. So great.
I cooked kidney beans that time and they came out a bit overcooked, so next time I will remove the pot from the warm element to finish the cooking sequence.
I usually cook up a big pot of beans - usually about 2 cups of dried beans. Once they’re cooked they can double in size, which can make a lot of beans!
What the heck do I do with all those beans? I freeze them! EASY! Just divvy them up into containers or freezer bags and boom, you’ve got beans for plenty of future meals.
What do I cook with my beans?
Baked Beef Tacos from Budget Bytes
Spinach and Rice Pilaf from Budget Bytes
Let us know if you’ve tried this method and how it worked for you!
