Several sources like this say that slow cooking is insufficient to eliminate the toxins.
Several sources also say red and white kidney beans and broad beans (fava) have this problem. I’ve only used any of those in bean mixes in small quantities. Other white beans seem to be fine, and I haven’t found any references to other problematic beans.
That’s for kidney beans. Plus even those only need 10 minutes of boiling. Most beans don’t contain that toxin.
So that’s the other possible I’m (slightly) worried about. But all the sources emphasize red kidney beans, and seem to downplay various other kinds of beans. And the question still stands: Does soaking in cold water, then rinsing, suffice?
My sources include various actual bags of beans with cooking directions, and some of them say: Soak overnight, rinse, then boil until tender. So that seems to suggest that pre-boiling is not necessary.
You’re only soaking overnight to save time on boiling the next day. Beans take a long time to rehydrate. You can also boil 10 minutes, sit an hour, then cook. Otherwise it takes an extra hour or two to boil. It’s simply to save cooking time. Pre-boiling is not necessary, just convenient.
This confuses me. The various sources I’ve been reading in the last few hours specify a few kinds of beans that are especially toxic, saying that others are much less so, and some kinds have other kinds of toxins. But nobody specifically mentions white beans. But like TriPolar wrote just above, I’ve gotten the impressions that white beans are fine. And especially if they are boiled (well, maybe even just simmered?) for two hours then rinsed and then cooked some more.
I think I’d feel safe eating that.
The articles don’t even agree on the temperatures they are talking about. ‘Slow cook’ is as ambiguous as ‘simmer’, both of which are measured between 129 and 190 dashes of temperature.
This is some kind of chemical reaction, not about killing pathogens, so there may be some minimal temperature that needs to be achieved no matter how long the time period.
I’m going to stick to my usual practice of not eating kidney beans so I don’t have to add this to the already long list of things to worry about.
Crockpot high temp is supposedly 300F. It’s the low temp that’s a problem (190F).
This is why I only use canned pre-cooked beans. Ain’t nobody got time to mess with dry beans.
Haha! True, canned is fast when you’re in a hurry.
If you eat a lot of beans, its easy to plan ahead. It’s just brainless soaking and boiling, there’s no work involved. And it tastes far better and costs hardly anything. But it’s hardly worth the effort for small amounts.
Okay, next day now. We have some follow-up.
All the above is now moot. I checked with the neighbors today and found that they are all dead went ahead and threw out the whole lot after all.
But I may have learned something useful for myself anyway, since I have a large stash of beans that I cook up in a large slow-cooker occasionally. This thread may help me avoid my doomed neighbors’ fate, or at least avoid the fate of their doomed food.
FDA recommendation on the treatment of beans:
The FDA recommends these steps for preparing dry red kidney beans: