Dry beans are affordable, yummy, filling, one of my favorite things to eat, and also easy to cook from scratch.
It's always smart to have some canned beans in the pantry, but cooking dry beans from scratch is easy - it just takes a little fore-thought. You can also freeze cooked beans for ~4 months in ziploc bags.
Beans cook to a weight of 2.5 times the original weight. I.e. - you would weigh out 6.4 oz of dry beans if you are looking at a recipe that calls for 1lb (16 ounces) of cooked beans. 6.4oz x 2.5 = 16 ounces or 16 ounces/ 2.5 = 6.4 oz. Make sense? Another good example is 1 cup dry beans will look like ~ 2.5 cups of cooked beans.
This recipe works with nearly all dry beans: garbanzo (chickpeas), pinto beans, kidney beans, navy beans, cannellini beans, black eyed peas, northern beans, lima beans, adzuki beans, and cranberry beans.
Serving Suggestion
Serve these Scratch Made Cooked Beans in any one of these recipes. Your tastebuds will thank you for the labor of love.
You May Also Like
If you like "scratch cooking", you may like these other "how to's" of making homemade recipes:
Things In My Kitchen:
- Crockpot - for cooking the beans all day
- Instant Pot - for pressure cooking the beans
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Cooking Tip - How To Cook Dry Beans
EatSimpleFood.com
Dry beans are affordable, yummy, filling, and one of my favorite things to eat. It's always smart to have some canned beans in the pantry, but cooking dry beans from scratch is easy - it just takes a little fore-thought.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 2 hours
- Total Time: 2 hours 5 minutes
- Yield: 2 ½ pounds
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Crockpot / Instapot / Braised
- Cuisine: Spanish
- Diet: Gluten Free
Ingredients
- 1 lb beans
- water to cover by 3 inches
Instructions
How To Cook Dry Beans:
- Buy fresh beans with no wrinkles in the surface- check out the bulk section. It will be cheaper and fresher because the beans have a high turn over rate in bulk. Keep them in a glass jar away from direct sunlight.
- Rinse the beans and pick out any beans that float to the top and/or pick out any dirt/rocks (these will generally float to the bottom).
- Soak the beans overnight (covered with a cracked lid to avoid fermentation and bubbling over). It will take the stinker sugary gas out of em. A general rule is ~ 4-5 cups of water for 1 cup of dry beans for soaking.
- Don't cook the beans in the soaking water- give them fresh water to cook in.
- Cover with water by a ~3 inches (general rule for soaked beans is to cook in 3-4 cups of water for each cup of dry beans). Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer covered until tender (some beans take longer than others (up to 2 hours) depending on the type and if you pre-soaked or not.
- Flavor with herbs, spices, oils, vinegars, etc... if you want but you can always do this later too. Don't flavor until ~30 minutes before done.
- Drain or serve with the liquid it was cooked in. Whichever you prefer!
If you forget to soak overnight, you can also cook them from dry in the Crock-Pot
Happy Bean Cookin'! Beckie
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