How to Cook Dry Beans
Yield: 5-8 servings
Prep Time: 8-12 hours
Cook Time: 50 minutes
Cookware
Heavy-bottomed sauce pot
Ingredients
For soaking…
200g (1 cup) dry beans
700g (3 cups) warm water
7g salt (about 1 1/4 teaspoons)
For cooking…
Pre-soaked beans (about 450g)
950g (4 cups) water
10g salt (about 1/2 tablespoon)
1/2 yellow onion (peeled, cut vertically, and left intact)
1/2 carrot (peeled)
2 small inner celery ribs (leaves attached)
3 large garlic cloves (peeled and halved)
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons red wine
1 strip of kombu (optional)
Instructions
Dissolve salt into the water. Soak beans in the brine overnight. Rinse thoroughly before cooking.
Bring water to a simmer over medium-high heat in a heavy-bottomed sauce pot. Stir in the pre-soaked beans, vegetables, bay leaf, and salt. Feel free to add or replace other aromatic ingredients such as fresh poultry herbs or dried chiles to suit your personal taste.
Return to a simmer and reduce the heat to low. Cover and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until beans are tender and the cooking liquid has thickened. Never allow the water to reach a boil to avoid tearing the bean skins or breaking down the vegetables. Alternatively, you can cook in a tightly sealed slow-cooker for 6-8 hours.
Discard vegetables and aromatics. Stir in wine and cook over medium heat until the raw taste of wine is no longer present.
Introduction
Among home cooks and culinary professionals, a discussion on cooking dry beans can be contentious at best. Some will insist that beans must be soaked overnight before you even consider placing a pot on the stove. Others wince at the thought of adding salt too early in the cooking process, as doing so (they claim) results in an indigestible bean with hopelessly toughened skin. Ask these same individuals how they would clean a cast-iron skillet and you’d likely receive an answer charged with a similar degree of conviction. We have tested nearly every combination of these must-follow bean cooking techniques, then tested some new ones for good measure. In almost every instance, the hearty dry bean has proven itself to be far more forgiving than most are willing to give it credit for. This recipe has consistently produced the best results in our trials but feel free to play around with it. After all, the indigenous people here in Maine historically cooked their beans with nothing more than hot embers and freshly dug hole in the ground. A simple recipe, sure, but with a splash of maple syrup, it could rival just about any other.
Soaking and Brining
Soaking beans has its pros and cons. While soaking will drastically reduce the cooking time, it requires quite a bit of forethought and preparation. Some argue that skipping the soak allows beans to retain more flavor and nutrition by limiting their opportunity to leach solutes into the water. We’ll leave it up to you which method you choose to employ. If you need your beans tonight, feel free to skip the soak. However, we find that pre-soaking saves time and improves the texture with no discernible difference in flavor.
Using salt water for the soak has a few key benefits. Firstly, salt prevents magnesium and calcium from binding to (and hardening) the cell walls of beans. This is particularly important if your primary water source has a high mineral content. Secondly, soaking beans with salt will increase the concentration of solutes in the water, effectively reducing the degree to which water-soluble compounds from the beans are able to leach into the water — resulting in a more flavorful and nutritious end product.
Utilizing Salt
We prefer a salt concentration of about 10 grams per liter of water for soaking and cooking but if you have a high tolerance for salt, feel free to increase this to 15 or even 20g/L. Contrary to the advice of many, salt does not inhibit beans from absorbing water, but it does slow absorption down. You can choose to add salt just during the soak, just while cooking, both, or neither. In the end, the difference in texture will likely be subtle, so feel free to experiment.
Improving Digestibility
To aid digestion, add a strip of kombu seaweed during the soaking or cooking process. Doing so during both will likely cause the seaweed to break up into small pieces or even disintegrate entirely, which may not be all that convenient. Kombu is a species of kelp that contains alpha-galactosidase, an enzyme that helps your body to digest the oligosaccharides (a type of sugar) that are present in beans and cause the all-too-familiar gassy side effects. Kombu lends subtle umami notes to your beans while also releasing trace minerals and nutrients, including iodine (kombu has highest concentration of iodine of all seaweed species). Furthermore, kelp farming absorbs significant amounts of carbon from our oceans, making marine environments less acidic. What’s not to love?