My apologies to all my loyal Tummy Treasure fans as I’ve been trying to get back in the blogging groove. We’ve had a very busy several weeks here, and now are finally officially enjoying summer vacation. Hitting the drive thru a few days a week just doesn’t make for exciting blogging fodder, but I think maybe I’ve turned a corner, and the kitchen is re-opening for a while.
On the menu later this week, I have a few dishes planned that utilize pinto beans, so I thought I’d get a head start and make my beans ahead of time. If you’ve spent any time here, you know how much of a fan I am of dried beans, and you also know that my usual method of cooking them doesn’t require any advance soaking or prep.
But then I began wondering if the soaking actually made any difference at all, and since I had plenty of time on my hands, I decided to see if soaking overnight made any difference with cooking dried beans. The process is easy enough, rinse the beans, cover with water and soak overnight. So I did that. What shouldn’t have surprised me though, is that the next morning, the beans were very plump and much larger in size- I daresay they doubled! Total, I would say they soaked for about 15 hours.
I then rinsed the beans again, dumped them in the pot, covered with water and added salt and pepper to season the cooking water. I put the pot on the stove, covered it, and turned the heat up to high to bring it to a boil. Once it was boiling, I turned it down to a simmer and walked away for 30 minutes. When I came back, I was very surprised to find that my beans were almost done already! In fact, if I were using them in a long simmering soup or stew, they probably would have been fine to take off the heat right there. I ‘m planning on using them for bean burgers and a tart later this week, so I need them soft, they will end up mushed, so I gave them another 20 minutes, and they were perfectly done. Soft and tender and delicious right out of the pot.
Very interesting. My usual method of not soaking the beans results in a much longer cooking time. Now I will say that I didn’t notice any significant change in the quality of the beans with either cooking method, but I really liked that with the soaked beans, my beans were ready in under an hour. That is a significant time savings, and well worth noting for future reference. When I looked up legumes in my How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, Mark Bittman notes that he finds 8 to 12 hours ideal for the soaking times, and actually suggests setting beans to soak in the early morning before leaving for work, and then finishing them up when returning home- and I can totally see doing that. If I worked outside the home of course.
So overall, I’m both surprised and pleased with the results of soaking the beans first. I still agree wholeheartedly that you can cook dried beans without the soaking, but if you have inkling and are looking for a little less active cook time, soaking is the way to go.