Beans – Canned or Dried?
I can’t think of a basic vegetarian cookbook that doesn’t cover how to cook dried beans. And for something so basic, there is a surprising amount of variation in the advice you are apt to read. A quick online search yielded a ton of hits, all of which were very long pages. It seems everyone has a lot to say on the subject.
If I use “can of beans” as the unit of measurement in a recipe, it means 15 ounces or 1 ½ cups. Making beans from dried is easy to do and they taste much better than canned once you get the texture/salt part of it down, but you need to plan ahead, even when using a fast-cook method. And if you don’t know, I’m doing this blog because I am unorganized. I keep both dried and canned in the pantry.
Do not use the liquid from the can of beans, it has a slightly funky taste, plus they coat the inside of the cans with that bad-for-you plastic. Water or stock is better.
Leftover cooked beans freeze perfectly well, and if you use them on a night when you are also making rice, you can make burgers.
Date: December 17, 2009