5 ms·

With regards to beans, I'm always blowing up my beans in the pressure cooker or having them hard. I've not found the right touch to get what I can from a can or

With regards to beans, I'm always blowing up my beans in the pressure cooker or having them hard. I've not found the right touch to get what I can from a can or on the stove top. I need your secrets!

dkarl 5y ago
With beans, cooking them fast is a double-edged sword. Now that I'm working from home, I prefer to cook mine in the oven, precisely because it takes hours, and I don't have to be precise and disciplined about checking on them. If I get caught up in work and check twenty minutes later than I planned, there's no risk of ruining them.
amluto 5y ago
Try waiting for the pressure cooker to cool the point that it's no longer pressurized without releasing any steam. In general, if you have a container of wet things in a pressure cooker (e.g. a bean with its seed coat, but a jar with a lid works the same way), when the pressure outside the container drops below the pressure inside the container, the net force tries to expand the container. If the pressure inside the container drops below the vapor pressure of whatever is in the container (which is likely _above_ ambient pressure in a hot pressure cooker), the contents will boil, which can cause various unpleasant effects. This can be minimized by trying to keep everything inside roughly in equilibrium while the pressure drops below ambient. Or a pressurized cooling system could be used in which the pressure cooker is pressurized above the vapor pressure using something other than water vapor (e.g. air, but an inert gas could be used, too), and then the contents can be cooled as fast as desired without risk of boiling or rupturing anything. I've never heard of anything resembling the latter for home use. If I understand correctly, commercial canning operations will cool their jars under pressure while spraying the outside with disinfectant to minimize the risk of anything living getting in before the jars fully seal.
mrob 5y ago
I recommend using an electric pressure cooker with a pre-soak mode. I use the "Multigrain" mode on an Instant Pot LUX60 with the "More" option active, which according to the manual gives 45 minutes of warm soaking followed by 60 minutes of pressure cooking in the same water. I use plenty of water and discard it after cooking to remove some of the indigestible oligosaccharides, and I do not find soaking in separate water to be necessary.
swarnie 5y ago
Typically you open the Heinz can Microwave under clingfilm for 3-4 minutes Serve over toast. Its not that complicated right?
- sorokod 5y ago
  I like to choose myself how much salt and sugar I have along with my beans.
ikawe 5y ago
Rather than a "sure-fire-technique", "secrets" maybe just be a one-by-one elimination of errors. Sorry if this is obvious, but "blown up beans" pretty much universally means "overcooked". They probably would have been good if you'd cooked them less. However, "hard" beans are trickier. It might just mean "undercooked", and you can give them another few mins in the pressure cooker, or it might mean that the beans are old/were not stored in a dry air-tight container. So how to pressure cook good beans: Start here for rough times: https://fastcooking.ca/pressure_cookers/cooking_times_pressure_cooker.php https://fastcooking.ca/pressure_cookers/cooking_times_pressu... Cover beans with about 2-3x water. The goal is that once the beans have expanded there is no excess water. The excess is just diluting your seasoning. prepare seasoning (in this example for something good in a burrito, w/ corn bread, or served with a braised pork shoulder): brown a lot of onions in a lot of oil. For 2 cups of dry black/pinto beans, something like 1 large onion and 1/4c of neutral oil. Add 1/2 head of chopped garlic to the mess after the onions are browned. Add another drizzle of oil and into it add ground chili (preferably a smoky one like morita), cumin, and black pepper just as you are turning off the heat. The effect of cooking spices a moment in oil is positive (see indian "tadka"). Add salt and seasoning* in with the uncooked beans. My rule of thumb is that the cooking water should taste decidedly salty - a bit saltier than you ultimately want the beans to taste, since the salt will disperse somewhat into the volume of the beans. *Some people say don't salt or season until the beans are cooked, else your beans will stay tough. This is definitively not true in the case of salt - in fact the opposite, salt is shown to help denature the protein in beans and decrease cooking time: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,48&q=salt+cook+beans https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,48&q=salt+... It seems to be somewhat true in the case of the calcium leached from seasoning like onions and garlic, but, IMO with the pressure cooker it's not an issue in practice. Also cooking in an alkaline solution can help denature tough, improperly stored, beans. So if you're having a rough go of it, you could try adding a tsp of baking soda to the pot. Happy beaning!
mordechai9000 5y ago
It's not perfect, but I've had good results soaking the beans first. Soaking overnight works best, but in a pinch, two minutes at high pressure is sufficient. You can release the pressure quickly (by the steam valve) after the soak, because the beans are still hard. Discard the soaking water. Adding some salt to the cooking water (not the soaking water) will help keep the beans from turning to mush. You will probably have to experiment to find out what works for your cooking equipment, beans, and water chemistry. I assume a slow-cooker or stove-top method would remove some of the variables and make it easier to achieve a consistent result. I haven't manage to plan beans that far ahead in recent memory, so I can't confirm.
losvedir 5y ago
I just received my preordered America's Test Kitchen recipe book for Instant Pots in the mail yesterday. I loved their approach, generally, and was very excited to see that they had a pressure cooker book. I'm actually making my first pot of beans following it, as we speak! Anyway, they say that to "minimize busted beans" it's essential to brine them first, 1 lb of beans to 2 qts water with 1.5 tablespoons of salt. You can either soak overnight or bring to a boil and then let sit for 1 hour. They also say you always need to add a bit of oil while cooking, and to use the "natural" pressure release rather than quick release. And 8 cups water to 1 lb of beans. Beyond that, you'll have to determine the particular cook time for your kind of bean, but they seem to range from "turn off as soon as pressure is obtained" for black beans to "3 minutes at pressure" for pinto beans. Hope that helps! I'm looking forward to seeing how my beans turn out following this. I haven't had great luck with pressure cookers in the past.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I love America's Test Kitchen. They are so worth the expense. Have you tried adding cream of tartar to your brine for the beans? It's supposed to help with reducing how gassy you can get from beans.
  - vram22 5y ago
    In India, people in a hurry, and some restaurants, add baking soda to chickpea dishes, like chana masala, to reduce that gassy effect, I've heard. Don't like to do it myself. Soaking the chickpeas in warm water for a few hours before cooking, and adding enough Indian spices and masalas, for both taste and digestion, probably cuts the gassiness.
kevinmchugh 5y ago
There's variability even using the same bean and the same settings on your cooker because venting can vary, I think based on humidity. I've had my cooker vent in 15 minutes, or 60 - it's still cooking while it vents. So you have to be aware of that when you start the cook. If you've got a broth going on the stove at the same time, the beans will vent more slowly
gnicholas 5y ago
For garbanzos, I do 45 mins cooking followed by 15 mins (or more) of natural release. Works great every time!
- kevinmchugh 5y ago
  At what pressure? I think I do like 15 minutes at 12 psi
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    Whatever the default is on my Instant Pot. I think it defaults to "high". I don't use the bean-specific setting, which didn't work well for me.
downut 5y ago
Haha, I had cooked beans and rice no problem at all at sea level for twenty years. Then I moved to 5500'. Even a year after moving in, I once ruined three consecutive (same afternoon) pots of brown rice. I ruined a couple of 15 (or whatever) bean soups, too. Got to soak ahead of time. Now I never fail. I use a pressure cooker on the bigger beans. You just have to pay attention to the time/result and calibrate your cooker.

With regards to beans, I'm always blowing up my beans in the pressure cooker or having them hard. I've not found the right touch to get what I can from a can or on the stove top. I need your secrets!

dkarl 5y ago

With beans, cooking them fast is a double-edged sword. Now that I'm working from home, I prefer to cook mine in the oven, precisely because it takes hours, and I don't have to be precise and disciplined about checking on them. If I get caught up in work and check twenty minutes later than I planned, there's no risk of ruining them.

amluto 5y ago

Try waiting for the pressure cooker to cool the point that it's no longer pressurized without releasing any steam. In general, if you have a container of wet things in a pressure cooker (e.g. a bean with its seed coat, but a jar with a lid works the same way), when the pressure outside the container drops below the pressure inside the container, the net force tries to expand the container. If the pressure inside the container drops below the vapor pressure of whatever is in the container (which is likely _above_ ambient pressure in a hot pressure cooker), the contents will boil, which can cause various unpleasant effects. This can be minimized by trying to keep everything inside roughly in equilibrium while the pressure drops below ambient. Or a pressurized cooling system could be used in which the pressure cooker is pressurized above the vapor pressure using something other than water vapor (e.g. air, but an inert gas could be used, too), and then the contents can be cooled as fast as desired without risk of boiling or rupturing anything. I've never heard of anything resembling the latter for home use. If I understand correctly, commercial canning operations will cool their jars under pressure while spraying the outside with disinfectant to minimize the risk of anything living getting in before the jars fully seal.

mrob 5y ago

I recommend using an electric pressure cooker with a pre-soak mode. I use the "Multigrain" mode on an Instant Pot LUX60 with the "More" option active, which according to the manual gives 45 minutes of warm soaking followed by 60 minutes of pressure cooking in the same water. I use plenty of water and discard it after cooking to remove some of the indigestible oligosaccharides, and I do not find soaking in separate water to be necessary.

swarnie 5y ago

Typically you open the Heinz can Microwave under clingfilm for 3-4 minutes Serve over toast. Its not that complicated right?

sorokod 5y ago
I like to choose myself how much salt and sugar I have along with my beans.

ikawe 5y ago

Rather than a "sure-fire-technique", "secrets" maybe just be a one-by-one elimination of errors. Sorry if this is obvious, but "blown up beans" pretty much universally means "overcooked". They probably would have been good if you'd cooked them less. However, "hard" beans are trickier. It might just mean "undercooked", and you can give them another few mins in the pressure cooker, or it might mean that the beans are old/were not stored in a dry air-tight container. So how to pressure cook good beans: Start here for rough times: https://fastcooking.ca/pressure_cookers/cooking_times_pressure_cooker.php https://fastcooking.ca/pressure_cookers/cooking_times_pressu... Cover beans with about 2-3x water. The goal is that once the beans have expanded there is no excess water. The excess is just diluting your seasoning. prepare seasoning (in this example for something good in a burrito, w/ corn bread, or served with a braised pork shoulder): brown a lot of onions in a lot of oil. For 2 cups of dry black/pinto beans, something like 1 large onion and 1/4c of neutral oil. Add 1/2 head of chopped garlic to the mess after the onions are browned. Add another drizzle of oil and into it add ground chili (preferably a smoky one like morita), cumin, and black pepper just as you are turning off the heat. The effect of cooking spices a moment in oil is positive (see indian "tadka"). Add salt and seasoning* in with the uncooked beans. My rule of thumb is that the cooking water should taste decidedly salty - a bit saltier than you ultimately want the beans to taste, since the salt will disperse somewhat into the volume of the beans. *Some people say don't salt or season until the beans are cooked, else your beans will stay tough. This is definitively not true in the case of salt - in fact the opposite, salt is shown to help denature the protein in beans and decrease cooking time: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,48&q=salt+cook+beans https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,48&q=salt+... It seems to be somewhat true in the case of the calcium leached from seasoning like onions and garlic, but, IMO with the pressure cooker it's not an issue in practice. Also cooking in an alkaline solution can help denature tough, improperly stored, beans. So if you're having a rough go of it, you could try adding a tsp of baking soda to the pot. Happy beaning!

mordechai9000 5y ago

It's not perfect, but I've had good results soaking the beans first. Soaking overnight works best, but in a pinch, two minutes at high pressure is sufficient. You can release the pressure quickly (by the steam valve) after the soak, because the beans are still hard. Discard the soaking water. Adding some salt to the cooking water (not the soaking water) will help keep the beans from turning to mush. You will probably have to experiment to find out what works for your cooking equipment, beans, and water chemistry. I assume a slow-cooker or stove-top method would remove some of the variables and make it easier to achieve a consistent result. I haven't manage to plan beans that far ahead in recent memory, so I can't confirm.

losvedir 5y ago

I just received my preordered America's Test Kitchen recipe book for Instant Pots in the mail yesterday. I loved their approach, generally, and was very excited to see that they had a pressure cooker book. I'm actually making my first pot of beans following it, as we speak! Anyway, they say that to "minimize busted beans" it's essential to brine them first, 1 lb of beans to 2 qts water with 1.5 tablespoons of salt. You can either soak overnight or bring to a boil and then let sit for 1 hour. They also say you always need to add a bit of oil while cooking, and to use the "natural" pressure release rather than quick release. And 8 cups water to 1 lb of beans. Beyond that, you'll have to determine the particular cook time for your kind of bean, but they seem to range from "turn off as soon as pressure is obtained" for black beans to "3 minutes at pressure" for pinto beans. Hope that helps! I'm looking forward to seeing how my beans turn out following this. I haven't had great luck with pressure cookers in the past.

dylan604 5y ago
I love America's Test Kitchen. They are so worth the expense. Have you tried adding cream of tartar to your brine for the beans? It's supposed to help with reducing how gassy you can get from beans.
- vram22 5y ago
  In India, people in a hurry, and some restaurants, add baking soda to chickpea dishes, like chana masala, to reduce that gassy effect, I've heard. Don't like to do it myself. Soaking the chickpeas in warm water for a few hours before cooking, and adding enough Indian spices and masalas, for both taste and digestion, probably cuts the gassiness.

kevinmchugh 5y ago

There's variability even using the same bean and the same settings on your cooker because venting can vary, I think based on humidity. I've had my cooker vent in 15 minutes, or 60 - it's still cooking while it vents. So you have to be aware of that when you start the cook. If you've got a broth going on the stove at the same time, the beans will vent more slowly

gnicholas 5y ago

For garbanzos, I do 45 mins cooking followed by 15 mins (or more) of natural release. Works great every time!

kevinmchugh 5y ago
At what pressure? I think I do like 15 minutes at 12 psi
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Whatever the default is on my Instant Pot. I think it defaults to "high". I don't use the bean-specific setting, which didn't work well for me.

downut 5y ago

Haha, I had cooked beans and rice no problem at all at sea level for twenty years. Then I moved to 5500'. Even a year after moving in, I once ruined three consecutive (same afternoon) pots of brown rice. I ruined a couple of 15 (or whatever) bean soups, too. Got to soak ahead of time. Now I never fail. I use a pressure cooker on the bigger beans. You just have to pay attention to the time/result and calibrate your cooker.