Guest Post: The Simplicity of Dry Beans

Hello all! For the next couple weeks, I'm going to have a series of guest posts from my mother Jane. She is an excellent cook that I've learned almost everything from! She is especially an expert at using dry beans, which is something I haven't completely mastered yet. So these next few weeks, she's going to be showing you a few ways that she's found to make and use dry beans! I hope you all enjoy it! -Lorraine 

There’s no reason to be timid about trying dry beans. If you have never tried cooking beans in the past, read and see how easy it is! Dry beans can require anywhere from 1-3 hours of simmering after their overnight soak. The time varies depending on the type of bean, the age of bean, and the temperature of your stove.  If you don’t have that kind of time, you can cut the time down to 25 minutes using a pressure cooker.

The benefits of fixing your own dry beans instead of buying store bought far outweigh the convenience of purchasing a can:
• Average cost for a can of cooked beans: $1.20 (2 cups of cooked beans)
• Average cost for a pound of dried beans: $1.50 to $2.00 (8 cups of cooked beans)
• A can of black beans has 13 ingredients
• A can of red beans has 10 ingredients including high fructose corn syrup
• Cooking beans at home only requires 2 ingredients (water and beans)
• Cook extra beans and freeze in half pint containers for future use
• Home canned beans are as convenient to use as store-bought with known ingredients
 
There’s 4 basic ways to cook beans:
1. Soak overnight, drain, add water and cook on low in a crock pot for 5 to 8 hours
2. Soak overnight, drain, add water and simmer on the stove
3. No soak.  Pressure cook.
4. Home canning.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be looking at each of these methods more in depth.