Surprise! The dry beans you stockpiled a pain to cook. Use these tips, tricks, & best practices

Josh CentersContributor - October 13, 2020

The spike in Google searches for “dry beans” in mid-March confirms what we all saw when we went to the grocery stores to stock up at the start of the
[See the full post at: Surprise! The dry beans you stockpiled a pain to cook. Use these tips, tricks, & best practices]

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We have hard water so I soak mine with a pinch of baking soda, change the soaking water, and cook with another pinch of baking soda. Without the baking soda, they won’t soften up. 

 

Since my daddy was raised in south Louisiana, I grew up eating red beans & rice.  My mom was from south Mississippi, and she cooked a lot of white beans with ham.  All my life, I’ve soaked dried beans overnite with perfect results.  Occasionally, when cooking beans at the last moment I’ve done the quick method with equally good results.  Normally I season my beans with the cajun trinity… onion, bell pepper & celery.  For additional seasoning I add a couple of smoked ham hocks.  Then for the red beans I’ll add cajun sausage and/or tasso ham.  White beans get a bunch of ham with preferably a ham bone.

I find the overnite soak does a better job of limiting a gas attack, especially if you change the water 2 or 3 times.  Another way to boost flavor and reduce gas is to add a strip of dried kombu seaweed.  Just remove it when beans are done.

 

Wow! You sure got me hungry now! I’m going to try some of your ideas this week 🙂 Thanks for sharing

Quick question Redneck, when you soak the beans overnight, do you do it in cold, lukewarm, or hot water?

 

Just cool tap water.  Something I do with red beans is at the end of cooking, I’ll take my large spoon that I use for stirring, and crush some of the beans against the side of the pot.  That thickens up the liquid & adds a lot to the flavor.

I’ll normally cook for around 3 hours on a slow simmer.  At around the 2 hour point, I start tasting a bean to check doneness.  I keep checking every 15 minutes or so till I get a tender bean.  At that point, I start crushing some & take off the heat.

 

In Mexico, where they eat a lot of beans, the flatulence issue is handled quickly and simply by adding 2T of baking soda to the water. No extra soaking required. 

 

If you have an old-school stove top pressure cooker, that might work for grid-down cooking (like on a propane camp stove, though it might take a lot of propane to get the job done).

On a stove top, the pressure cooker typically takes 30 minutes of pressure cooking if you start with once boiled dry beans

Some people soak their dry beans overnight, drain them, then FREEZE them, then cook them (they then get soft in about 20 minutes of cooking)

Why?

Freezing makes the water absorbed by the beans expand which then breaks down some of the cellulose strands holding the bean cells together. Cooking for hours does the same for breaking down that cellulose but it’s a lot slower & potentially uses more energy.

Supposedly the FASTEST way to cook dry beans is soak them over night, drain them, then freeze & then finally cook them in a pressure cooker (stove-top or electric like an Instant Pot).

 

So, I know I’m late to reading and posting. We eat beans from dried all the time. If you are not familiar with cooking beans from dried, you need to know that raw and undercooked beans contain a toxin. You MUST bring them to boiling and boil them for at least 10 minutes to eradicate the lectins that could make you sick. I always pressure cook mine when an option, but a pot on the stove or other heat source would work as well with a little more time. And FYI Paula Deen has a great pintos and ham recipe that is simple and YUMMY with cornbread!

 

YIKES! I didn’t know there was any danger to eating uncooked beans besides maybe chipping a tooth. I will make sure the beans I cook are well boiled in the future.

 

Another way to cook beans, along with many other foods, is on top of a wood stove. Mine has a flat top, I’ve done it many times. Growing up, we always kept a large pot of water sitting on top of ours, it adds some humidity to the air during winter.

 

If you still have power, save the stove when using the liner and doing the quick soak for instant pot cooking.  Prep beans as you normally would, add the salt and a little baking soda – like in a little – place it in the instant pot, add lit, open the valve, select sauté and boil them for the prescribed time.  The Instant Pot is on sauté while building pressure anyway. 

When cooking, the water temp gets up to the allowable pressure – yes, temperature.  As water heats under pressure, its boiling point rises thereby cooking the food faster – it then maintains the allowable pressure based on water temperature. 

Check online for the cook times on various dried beans and stockpile plenty of those that cook fastest:  Great Northern’s, I believe, are the fastest.  Lentils are a good protein and cook very fast.  If you cook Mexican-style, add a Tbsp of bacon grease, a bit of dried onion and a little dried or fresh epazote for a great flavor boost for any bean, especially pinto and black beans.

If you add cooked rice on the plate with beans, it forms a more complete protein, more easily digested and less gas.  Epazote helps there too.  But, with epazote, a little goes a long way.  Add too much, and you have what tastes like beans cooked in gasoline.

‘Redneck’ (below) has great advice for upping the flavor too.