I have a couple of questions about beans. I tried a new chili recipe last weekend that called for kidney, black and pinto beans. I wondered if it would have made a difference if I just put in 3 cans of kidney beans. If you had bowls of kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans, cannellini beans, and/or other beans, and were told to eat a spoonful of each blindfolded, would you be able to tell the difference?
My other question is, my MIL (for some unknown reason) gave us a bag of dried pinto beans. What in the heck do I do with them? I know they have to be soaked and I’m sure there are directions on the bag, but why bother? It seems to me buying a can of beans for under $1 would be much simpler.
That would depend on the taster. Some people can tell the difference, some can’t. The taste/texture differences between those are relatively small (although they do exit), and that’s even you eat them bare. Add any sort of strong flavored sauce or what not and the differences will probably be undetectable.
Well, I think getting a can for under $1 is a lot easier for me, but this is down to personal preference again. Some people prefer to start with dried beans even if they take more time. It’s sort of like how I prefer to bake my own bread but most folks just go out an buy a loaf when they want one. You do you. If the bag o’ beans is unopened you can always donate it to a food pantry if throwing it out would conflict with other personal preferences. Then buy a can of beans.
I use to make my chili from scratch including using dried beans. I found the difference was I cooked my beans in beef broth, I found this made the chili taste better and home cooked beans have creamier texture.
My wife made a pot of chili just last night - awesome! She uses a couple kinds of beans but the difference is undetectable to me. I think she adds different types just to mix-up the texture and color a bit, but as mentioned the rest of the bowl is heavily flavored with a bunch of other stuff which overpowers any flavor the beans are adding.
I’ve made Chana Masala using canned chickpeas and using dried chickpeas. The canned chickpeas are easier (duh) but more importantly they are more predictable. Every time I use canned chickpeas my meal turns out perfect. Using dried chickpeas I get an ok result one time, then the next time the peas are old and take forever to cook.
I’ve never had dried chickpeas give me a result superior to canned.
I can tell the difference in flavor between kdiney, black and pinto beans. Kidney are usually the ‘go-to’ for chili, but I’m not crazy about their flavor. I like black beans, but they are a very domineering ingredient, both flavor-wise and aesthetically (color). Pinto beans are my favorites for many purposes, primarily Tex-Mex stuff.
As to what is the benefit of dried beans over canned, I’m guessing the dried beans are significantly cheaper than canned, so if you’re using them as a diet staple you probably want to go with dried, despite the extra prep? I could be wrong though, never did a price comparison.
Yeah, I’ve tried using dried white beans for making bean soup, thinking the dried beans would be ‘better’ somehow, but no matter how long I soak and prep them, I can’t seem to get them to soften up properly.
Yep. If you start with a given volume of dry beans, you’ll end up with approximately (never measured, just going by eye) at least four or five times as much after soaking. So a pound bag of dry beans and a pound can of the same type of beans may cost pretty much the same, but the dry beans provide way the heck more ‘food’ when you get to the eating stage.
Yeah I would guess as you increase the quantity of beans being prepared the dried may be more economical (as in the Costco sized bags). Just a hunch, tho.
I just know that I enjoy making a big pot of beans from dried every now and then. It’s probably exactly like your bread baking knack. It’s just something I like to do; a slightly creative outlet?
But you can control the sodium content and many other factors when making bean from scratch. I know my wife doesn’t eat pork, and lots of canned beans use some type of pork. It’s easy to make sure there is no pork content when you make from scratch.
I just pressure cook the HELL out of my dried beans to get 'em softened up. Soak overnight, then do 75 minutes under pressure. Or skip the soak and do 99 minutes (high as my timer goes on the pressure cooker).
Dried beans have a nicer texture and flavor than canned, and as others have said, they’re a whole lot cheaper. Somehow people think it’s hard or time consuming to boil a pot of beans, but it’s about as hard and time consuming as boiling water.
I’ve found that if you’ve cooked too many beans, they freeze and thaw without much difference in texture.
If there’s a brand of cooked beans that’s readily available in your area and you don’t object to any of the ingredients (salt, meat, etc.), they’ll save you time and you’ll get similar results. There is a difference vs. dried beans, though, but it might not matter to you. I prefer dried beans for their flavor and texture, and because they’re not particularly time consuming, although there is a bit of a learning curve. Very satisfying, once you get the hang of it, as well as ultra-cheap and healthy. I cook them twice a week and eat them every other day, more or less: lentils, garbanzos, navy beans and kidney beans. It’s essential to find a reliable brand and retailer in order to avoid old beans. If the beans are good, garbanzos and kidney beans are the only ones of those four that require soaking overnight. Lentils will cook tender in about 40 minutes without a lid. You can soak navy beans, but I get better results (they don’t split) by boiling them for about 15 minutes, tossing the water and starting from there. Learned that trick from an elderly neighbor. I’ll stop here, because I could go on and on, so just ask if you have any questions or want recipes.
I have to disagree with this. IME, they don’t even double in volume.
I make dried beans the same reason I cook anything that I could buy prepared: often cheaper, occasionally better, and just for fun.
I just made a batch of baked pinto beans from dry. It came out fine. It probably would have been better if I’d used something other than cheap store brand smoked beef sausage. I did use bacon fat instead of olive oil for the sauteing part, and that probably helped. They’re somewhat sweet, but not the treacle mess that is most baked beans.
Anyway, making dried beans isn’t too hard, it just takes time. Find a recipe that looks interesting, and try it.
If the recipe calls for adding acid (like tomatoes) before the beans are cooked, runaway!
Acid will prevent the beans from softening, and they will never cook properly. Many dried bean recipes online do this, and they are wrong. If you otherwise like the looks of the recipe, just add the tomatoes after the beans are done, but it also probably means the author never actually tried the recipe.
Also, if you live someplace at altitude, it can take much longer to cook the beans than the recipe calls for, so make allowances.
I’ve also heard good things about adding baking soda to increase alkalinity. I’ve never tried it, but I understand it tenderizes the beans and makes them less gassy.
I do the baking soda trick and it does help a lot–my preferred method is I wash the beans, put them into cold water with the baking soda, bring the pot to a boil then turn it off and let them soak for some hours, usually overnight. Then I pour off that water, rinse several times in a colander then go ahead and cook whatever I’m doing. I’ve never had beans that stay hard, that seems really weird. If anything, I’m more likely to get beans that go to moosh when cooked for a long time but not all that often.
My favorite bean recipe is crock pot ham and beans. Small white beans done up as above then layered in a crockpot with chunked up onions, bunch of garlic cloves, ham hocks and sometimes chunks of ham if I have it available. Cover with water and cook all day. Serve with corn bread. Mmm, that’s first cold day of winter food, that is.
This is the reason why I use dried beans (when I use them, I normally have dried and canned). It’s a good way to add in additional flavor while controlling the salt which is sometimes a bit excessive in the cheaper canned varieties. Soaking in homemade broth or stock is a worthwhile addition, as any moisture sweated out over a long cooking period is going to be a flavorful addition to the final dish rather than just water weight.
Having said that, for most dishes, I probably used canned beans 3x the time. Just because the extra time and planning aren’t worth the effort for a basic dish. Now if I’m doing any sort of family gathering or competition, then the extra steps may be justified by my competitive nature.
ETA - as for dried chickpeas, I do often (say at least 50/50) use them as opposed to canned for making hummus. But that’s because I’m rehydrating them in a mixture of a mild beer (Corona normally) and lime juice, which add to the final flavor of my Southwestern lime/cilantro/jalapeno hummus.
That might happen if the measurement includes the other ingredients, especially the cooking liquid. But the beans alone? At the most, they double in volume, IME.