"Beans?" you may ask. "Why beans?"
I WILL TELL YOU WHY: beans are healthy, satisfying, versatile, and a vegetarian source of protein. Most importantly, though beans are cheap. I will likely have several discussions on the merits and uses of beans throughout the lifetime of this blog, but let's start with a little healthy debate.
Canned vs. Dried
I have bought canned beans exclusively for my entire life. Then, one day (yesterday) it occurred to me: why not try dried beans?
"Because," my inner voice piped up, "you have to soak them and they take like an hour to cook properly?"
My inner voice had a point. Why bother with the extra fuss when I can buy a can of beans and shove a burrito in my face 5 minutes later? Well, you may have seen this coming, but it turns out there are indisputable advantages to buying dry beans:
- They are less expensive. True, you can buy a can of beans for less than $1.25. But that same amount of money will buy you an entire 1 lb bag of dry beans, which contains about 4 times the amount a can does.
- They are healthier. Canned beans often have extra sodium, whereas dry beans do not.
- The taste. Dried beans reputedly taste better and have a nicer texture than their canned friends. Do I agree? READ ON TO FIND OUT!
So I bit the bean bullet and bought myself a bag of dried pinto beans from the produce mart.
Ooh, they were cute little devils! But now they needed to soak. There are various ways to do this, but I followed this handy guide by dietician Alice Henneman, MS.
I decided to start with a small batch, only 1/2 cup dry. Basically, you put the dry beans in a pot and cover them with water (1.6 cups of water per ounce of beans). Then you refrigerate them for the rest of your life 6-8 hours, or overnight. Look how plump they get!
The next morning, I woke up and started to cook the beans. There are a few important rules to remember: don't salt the beans until after they've cooked, and don't over-boil them. Bring them to a boil in 3x their volume in water. (You may add spices, but honestly I didn't find that made much of a difference in their taste. From now on, I will only add spices after this process.)
After about an hour or so, your beans should be tender. You can imagine my anticipation after waiting all these hours for a taste of live bean! So I grabbed one, popped it in my mouth, and...
It was good. Not mind-blowing. If I'm going to be honest I was expecting these to be damn near magical compared to the canned variety. Sadly, my first thought upon trying them was that they needed salt. Perhaps I'm just a rube who likes her legumes salty and tin-flavored. Or perhaps I just need to grow accustomed to my new bean-cookin' ways. I will say that cooking the beans this way made for firmer, heartier seeds. Plus, after I added spices I really did enjoy them immensely! And I still have 3/4 of a bag to experiment with. Not bad.
Bottom line:
In general, beans provide a cheap source of protein to pad your diet. Dry beans have health and budget advantages over canned ones, but it's up to you to decide whether or not they are worth the trouble.
3 comment(s) to... “Beans (partie une)”
3 comments:
YAY!
I love beans too. Do you have a crock pot? I find that you can add the whole bag of dry beans to the crock pot + 4-6 cups of water (depending on how much bean juice you want in the end), and let it go on low for 8 hours (or high for about 6 hours) and then they are ready--no pre-soaking needed!
I also find that when I add spices in this manner, the beans do absorb the flavors. You could use broth instead of water for a nice effect, too.
Hi-five, my beanie sistah! :D
High five right back atcha!
Sadly I do not have a crock pot :c It seems as though it's about time I got one! Thanks so much for the tip, sistah-friend! XD
Ooo crock is the way to go especially if it's just for the two of you guys. You can make one big crock pot meal and eat off of it for a few days. Dave loves it.
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