Cooking Dried Beans with Jill

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Cooking a really delicious pot of beans is an easy way to start off about a million different other tasty meals. If I have a huge pot of beans cooked, I know I am well on my way to easy meals for the rest of the week. Beans and cornbread, black bean soup, veggie burgers, enchiladas, or my husband’s favorite– burritos. You name it! Yum!

I usually cook dried black beans because they are locally available, but if you have dried pinto or red beans instead, that works great as well! Where I live the two most common beans are black or a small red. I tend to prefer the black beans because of the higher iron content and beautiful dark color of the bean broth it makes. You pick your favorite! Let’s start with a 2 lb (~900 gram) bag.

Ok, so you’ve got your dried beans, and you are ready to cook, right? Nope. We need to clean them first. Have you ever bitten into something hard in a pot of beans? Yeah, that was probably a rock. You don’t want to try to eat that…. Might chip a tooth or something. Instead, spread your beans out onto a clean towel or cookie sheet and take a good look. Stir them around a bit, so you can be sure. Tiny rocks can sneak in with the beans. Discard those. Take a look also for any odd or moldy beans or anything you don’t want in there. All set? Good. Now let’s get them soaking.

To soak or not to soak….

I have always done an overnight soak on my beans, as it is supposed to increase the digestibility of the beans. If you are crunched for time, you could alternately do a short soak, or some people don’t even soak them.

Dump your cleaned beans into your slow cooker. Mine is a 5 quart size and can nicely cook up 2 pounds of beans. If yours is smaller, adjust as needed. If you don’t have a slow cooker, you could use a large pot. I love my slow cooker, as the beans can simmer away all day while I work on other projects meanwhile permeating the house with the yummy smell of beany goodness.

Cover beans with water and have at least 3 or 4 inches water depth above the beans. Beans will swell as they soak! If any beans (or anything else) are floating, skim them out and toss. Place a lid on top and leave at room temperature overnight (8-16 hours or so).

The next morning, pour your beans into a colander or strainer and rinse beans and pot well.

Note that some of the beans may have split. This is okay! Now add your beans back into your slow cooker insert or pot then fill the vessel with water up to about one inch above the bean line. I measure using the distance between my first and second knuckle of my index finger….

Now we season them. Yes, we could just go ahead and cook them, but we are making a really delicious pot of beans, right? We want them to come out ready to go and super tasty!

We need some yummy aromatics and flavors to go in. I chop up 2/3 cup onions and mince 7 cloves of garlic and add those to the pot. Add in one teaspoon cumin and one tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon salt (I use pink Himalayan salt).

Wait, I thought you shouldn’t salt your beans before you cook them. Doesn’t it make them tough?

No. Salting your beans prior to cooking does not make them tough. I cooked them saltless for years then seasoned afterword, believing this to be the gospel. One day, I salted them before cooking. Wow, what a difference! So much better this way. So, yeah, go ahead. Don’t be afraid. Go ahead and salt your beans before you cook them.

Next, toss in one bay leaf.

Now here is where things get a bit interesting. Add 1/8 teaspoon each of ground turmeric and ground black pepper. Wha???

Won’t it taste like curry?

No, it will not make your beans taste like curry. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Just not what we are going for here. Turmeric can lend a lightly spicy and complex flavor to dishes and is a power house for its anti-inflammatory properties. Black pepper dramatically boosts the absorption of the active component in turmeric.

Now, we are going to add a different layer of heat. We are junkies for chocolate habañeros in our house. They have a beautifully smoky, spicy, complex flavor…. but these potent bad boys pack some MEGA heat. For you chile-heads out there, they come in around 425,000 to 577,000 Scoville Heat Units. For comparison, that is around 50 to 200 times HOTTER than a jalapeño. Use caution!

I mince up half to a whole chocolate habañero into our beans. If you don’t have chocolate habañeros, you could use jalapeños or whatever your favorite spicy pepper is. If you prefer, you could also just cook the pepper in the beans whole. My mother-in-law cooks hers this way and just removes the pepper afterwards. No problem.

Don’t like it picante? No worries, you can leave it out. It won’t hurt my feelings. Adjust the heat level to your and your family’s liking.

Can I add meat to my beans?

Of course you can! We don’t eat pork, poultry, or beef, but if you do, you could add a smoked ham hock or part of a smoked turkey leg. The smokiness would go nicely with the beans, especially if you skipped the naturally smoky chocolate habañero.

Finally, I mince up 6 large leaves of culantro coyote from our yard. This stuff literally grows like a weed because, well, it is a weed. I love when weeds actually can produce food for me. Yay!

Don’t have culantro coyote? No sweat. You could leave it out. Or you could instead use regular cilantro added at the end of cooking instead. Unlike its flavor cousin (regular cilantro), culantro coyote can be added early in the cooking and flavor up your food early in the cooking process.

Once you have added all those ingredients, you are ready to go. Put the lid on your slow cooker, and set your slow cooker to high. Depending on the type and age of your beans and how your slow cooker cooks, it should take around 4 to 6 hours to cook until soft.

If you are using a slow cooker, you shouldn’t need to stir your beans, but if you are simmering them covered on the stove, you should bring them to a boil then reduce your flame to a simmer. On the stove, you should check them often and add any additional liquid if it looks like it is needed. (They may take 45 minutes or 2 hours, depending on how high your flame is and the type of beans you are cooking.)

Don’t cook your beans to mush though, as we want them to maintain their integrity to go into other dishes. Once they are done, grab a spoonful straight out of the pot. Or a chip-full. (Nobody is judging here.)

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Now… what to do with your beans? You could eat them as is or with some sides. Or you could stay tuned to future posts, and I will share plenty of ideas with you!

Can I freeze my cooked beans?

Absolutely! These cooked beans freeze super well.

Can I cook other beans this way?

White beans, chickpeas, etc. could totally be cooked this way, adjusting cook time as needed, but you may wish to mix up the spices a bit if you are going to use them differently. Lentils, however, I would not cook this way.