The Daily Grind, Chop and Fry

A few months ago I wrote a quick post about canned vs. dried beans, and left it up to you all to wade through the plethora of information on soaking and cooking techniques for the many varieties of dried beans. I’ve been fiddling around with cooking techniques on my own in a more organized manner than my usual slap-dash approach, and want to share a few things now that I’ve found a no-fuss brainless way to make beans.

I’m going to skip discussing the standard stovetop method that takes a few hours; every cook book will tell you how to do this, and it is a fine method if you are planning well in advance.

There is a fast-soak method that I’ve tried a number of times and never been happy with. You put the cleaned beans in a large pot with plenty of water and bring the water up to a boil and turn it off after a minute or two, cover and let soak for about an hour, and up to four. In spite of what people say about this being a great method, my beans always end up splitting when they are finally cooked.

Another way to speed things up considerably is the pressure cooker. This works crazy fast, but, again, I’m not thrilled with the results. Black beans are done in less than six minutes, but because you can’t monitor how things are going without stopping the whole process, it has been hard for me to control how the beans come out. You can’t just say “black beans take 5.5 minutes” – older beans can take longer to cook than fresher ones. But my pressure cooker is crummy, and many of the recommendations for cooking beans in the pressure cooker include doing things my cooker cannot. So if you have a good pressure cooker, you should experiment with this method, because in addition to being fast it is very economical, since you cook the beans in a small fraction of the time. That is, if you have the pot already – pressure cookers are not cheap.

My favorite no-fuss method is to soak the beans overnight and cook them in the crock pot. Since not all crock pots are the same, you’ll need to experiment, but you should be able to set it up so that they will be done by they time you get home to make dinner. If they are going to sit for some time after cooking, consider that they will continue to soften as they sit. Even if you are home all day it’s great to be able to put everything in the pot, season it, and forget it. Every time I’ve made them this way they’ve come out perfectly.

Adding salt during cooking is essential; once the beans are finished cooking, the flesh will not absorb salt any more, and putting salt on the dish after the fact doesn’t work. One tsp. per pound of dried beans is the recommended amount. Also add a teaspoon of mild vinegar during cooking, which helps soften the skins, unless the flavor will really conflict with the end dish.

This is going to sound weird, but since I’ve been making beans in the crock pot I’ve actually been getting compliments on the beans, just the plain beans, before anything fancy has been done to them. I do add pepper and vinegar and sometimes a bay leaf or two, but I’ve always done that. When you top that with the fact that dried beans are a great budget stretcher, there don’t seem to be any good reasons to not make your own. (But I keep a few cans in the pantry just in case.)