Tips for Cooking Your Beans to use in Food Storage Recipes

Posted by Crystal-Everyday Food Storage on Sunday, January 6, 2008 · Comments

Cooking your DRY Beans: Dry beans need to be soaked before they can be cooked.

Quick Soaking - For each pound of beans, add 10 cups hot water; heat to boiling and let boil 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and set aside for at least 1 hour.

Overnight Soak - For each pound (2 cups) dry-packaged beans, add 10 cups cold water, then let soak overnight, or at least 8 hours.

Cooking Beans

Once your beans have soaked and tripled in size, it’s time to cook them. The most important step in this process is to drain off the soaking water and rinse the beans before cooking to help decrease the gas side effect. Depending on the bean variety, it will take 30 minutes to 2 hours to cook. Make sure and check the package for more specific directions. You’ll know the beans are done when they are tender, but not overcooked. If your beans have been sitting in your food storage for a long time you will need to cook them for a longer period of time. Cool the beans in their cooking liquid if you are not adding them to another liquid, like a soup, when they are done cooking.

Storing Freshly Cooked Beans

Because cooking beans can be a process, you may want to cook more than you need and store them for next time to save you time (and you’re only making one mess!). Store cooked beans tightly covered in the fridge up to 5 days or in the freezer for up to 6 months.

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trainagiles

The best thing to do is to buy a pressure cooker. It takes me only 1 hour to cook dry pinto beans that haven't been soaked at all. It was the best investment in my cooking to save me time and energy. I also use it for brown rice and it only takes me 17 minutes from the time it steams.

tammygraf

My husband and mother will not eat beans. My husband says they are bad for his gout and they give my mother the runs. I love beans and have beans in my food storage but since I'm the only one that will eat them - what good are they? My question is does anyone know how to make beans less toxic for my mother?

hecfino68

I would check with your husbands doctor about the beans, because everything that I have learned ab out gout says the opposite. Lowering intake of dietary purines from meat and seafood, consuming adequate vitamin C, limiting alcohol and fructose ingestion, and avoiding obesity have all been shown to be effective in preventing gout.
Vitamin C in take of 1,500 mg decreases the risk of gout by 45% compared to 250 milligrams per day. Beans should actually be a good food for him. For your mother--try grinding beans into bean flour and putting some into your bread or using it to thicken gravy. Put a couple of tablespoons on a salad--ect. Do small amounts several times a week and see if she reacts the same way. Her body may just take longer to adjust to them.

Guest

The best way to eliminate gas in beans is to sprout them first. Rinse the dry beans then let them soak overnight in a glass jar of water covering the beans. In the morning drain the water, rinse the beans, drain them again and set the wet beans (still in the jar) aside all day. The beans are not soaking in water anymore they are just wet in the jar. Rinse and drain again in the evening and set them aside. On the second day do the same thing, keeping the beans damp from rinsing and draining in the morning and in the evening (more often if beans look like they are getting dry). Keep doing this (usually three days, so it does take some planning ahead but its worth it) and the beans will begin to sprout. As soon as you notice the tiny sprout emerging from the bean that's when you use them in your recipe. The beans will not take quite as long to cook. If the beans don't sprout they could be old or room temperature is too cold. Place jar of damp beans in a sunny window to aid sprouting, but don't allow them to dry out.

kmcollier

This is a great way to reduce gas and increase their nutrition. When you sprout things it increases their nutrition value by 10-100% which could be a lifesaver if you did not have your vitamins or were missing certain foods. They taste great too!

Sherry

Has anyone tried the product/spice called "epazote" to decrease the gas from beans. I have recently purchased it & was told that many cultures from Central & South America use it in their recipes. It is a spice that adds NO flavor or taste but chemically eliminates that "gassy" side effect! :)

I plan to try it but was wondering if anyone else had already tried it?

Patti

I have tried baking soda in the beans and have not noticed any difference, however, here is a trick I have tried that does seem to work.
I put the beans in enough water to cover them and place them on the stove over high heat. When they start to boil, drain, add more hot water and repeat. Do this several times. This eliminates the need to soak overnight and it reduces the gas effect.
Hope it works for you!

Gillie

I've heard that adding baking soda to the beans while they soak will decrease the gas effect. Has anyone tried this or had success with another method? My husband knows immediately if there are beans in something :-)

Linda Clegg

Hi,

This is a quick-prep method for dry beans that I have used for years. I do the quick-soak method that you have outlined, then I put them in my pressure cooker at 10 lbs pressure for 10 minutes. This is a life saver if you want to make a bean recipe and you don't have a lot of time.

Linda

hecfino68

You can pressure cook extra and freeze them in freezer bags so you always have beans ready to go.