By Erik Marcus
No cooking skill is more important than learning how to prepare beans. That’s because beans have so much to offer. They are flavorful, easy to prepare, and dirt cheap.
New vegans sometimes complain that they don’t feel sufficiently satiated by their meals. But beans will stick to your ribs as thoroughly as meat-centered meals once did, leaving you satisfied for hours.
Not only that, beans come in a multitude of varieties. This means you can constantly try new varieties, and they won’t ever become monotonous. Beans are also a terrific source of protein, and most varieties are virtually fat-free.
Three Key Beans You’ll Want to Cook
Black beans and pinto beans are two of the most popular ingredients in Mexican cooking. They make a fantastic burrito filling. Also serve them alongside rice, guacamole, and salsa on a Mexican-style supper plate.
Beans also make the world’s best leftovers. In many Mexican households, leftover beans are refrigerated and then fried up the next day. To make Mexican style refrieds, just mash the beans and then mix in some water. Then heat it in a frying pan with some minced garlic that’s just been sautéed in some vegetable oil. If if you’re not a cilantro hater, stir in some chopped cilantro just before serving and you’ll really have something special.
While black beans and pintos dominate Mexican cooking, Garbanzo beans are wildly popular in India and the Middle East. Garbanzos—also called chick peas—might be the tastiest bean variety of all. They’ve got a distinctive flavor and an incredible texture. One reason garbanzos stand out among beans is that they contain significant amounts of fat, which delivers a richness of flavor that’s absent from other varieties.
Perhaps the most popular entrée in all of India is chana masala, a delicious curry comprised mostly of garbanzos. This dish is usually accompanies either rice samosas. Garbanzos are every bit as important in Middle Eastern cooking, as they are the main ingredient in that cuisine’s two most common foods—hummus and falafel.
Black beans, pintos, and garbanzos are the perfect starting point for your exploration of beans, but don’t stop there. Your local grocery or natural foods store sells dozens of other varieties
Buying Beans: Canned, Aseptic, and Dried
Beans can be purchased either canned or dried. Canned beans are super convenient, since they are pre-cleaned and fully cooked they need only be drained, heated, and spiced as desired. Additionally, many canned beans come fully prepared, and ready to heat and heat. When buying canned refried beans, always check the ingredients for lard. Since Mexican refried beans were traditionally cooked in lard, many canned varieties still contain it. Fortunately, canned refried beans are easy to find.
Prepared beans are also increasingly available in foil-lined plastic aseptic pouches. Many companies use this packaging for Indian-style bean entries like chana masala, and bean-based soups such as dal. You can also buy refried beans in aseptic pouches, but again check the ingredients for lard. Because the packaging weighs practically nothing, these beans are often considerably cheaper than canned varieties when purchased online.
While less convenient than beans sold in cans or aseptic packages, dried beans carry three advantages:
- they’re less than half the price of canned
- they offer superior taste and texture
- they carry a smaller environmental footprint.
The best place to buy dried beans is the bulk section of a good natural food store. Most of these markets carry about a dozen different bean varieties. Dried beans sold in bulk are remarkably inexpensive. On top of that, they’re often organically grown.
How to Cook Dried Beans from Scratch
Preparing dried beans is easy. Start by pouring them into a mixing bowl. Comb your fingers through the beans to make sure there aren’t any molar-cracking pebbles lurking within (never skip this step; you’ll find a pebbles far too often, and any pebble can crack a tooth!) Next, pour enough water into the bowl to submerge the beans. Since the beans soak up lots of water, be sure to use plenty of water so they’ll stay entirely submerged.
Cover the bowl to keep dust out, and soak for at least four hours. Many people start soaking the beans before bedtime so they’ll be ready to cook in the morning.
Note that soaking isn’t strictly necessary but doing so will cut your cooking time significantly, while saving time and energy. But even soaked beans can require several hours cooking in the stove pot or in a slow-cooker.
Instant Pots are the Easiest Way to Cook Beans
I always hated cooking beans, since it entailed babysitting a kettle clattering on the stove for hours on end. An Instant Pot puts a stop to that nonsense. It cooks beans in a third the time, does it silently, and automatically powers off and sounds a chime when your beans are cooked. If you want to cook beans from scratch even once in a while, I regard an Instant Pot (or a clone “multicooker” from a no-name brand), as practically a necessity.
You could also buy a pressure cooker, which cooks beans as quickly as an Instant Pot, but you’ll miss out on the timer and automatic shut off. Plus, I’m certain that an Instant Pot is vastly safer than an old school stove-top pressure cooker, since the sensors all but eliminate the possibility of explosions caused by overheating.
Proper Cooking is Vital
The cooking time for beans differs by variety, cooking method, and whether the beans were pre-soaked. Garbanzos, white beans, and kidney beans take most time to cook—up to a few hours for beans simmering on a stove-top. The bigger the bean the longer the required cooking time. Soaking dried beans in water overnight cuts stop-top preparation times by at least 20 percent.
You’ll know your beans are properly cooked when you can easily use your tongue to smoosh one against the roof of your mouth. As Moosewood Cookbook author Molly Katzen memorably put it, “crunchy beans don’t make it.” That was true in the 1970s when Katzen wrote those words, but it’s even more true today, as it has recently become known that many beans contain a toxic sugar-protein called lectin. Thorough cooking will destroy the lectin, so it’s important to thoroughly cook varieties of beans that contain this substance.
This is especially true with red kidney beans, which are loaded with a type of lectin so toxic that it’s even hazardous to pronounce: “phytohaemagglutinin.” Red kidney beans are sufficiently high in this substance that it’s wisest to soak them for at least five hours prior to cooking, and to discard the soaking water. The same warning applies to cannellini beans and broad beans, but those varieties are far less popular than red kidney beans. Please don’t let this warning frighten you away from eating these delicious bean varieties. Proper soaking and cooking makes beans as safe as any other food.
I recognize that all this soaking and simmering can sound daunting. So keep in mind that several varieties of tiny dried beans cook quickly with no need for soaking: split peas, lentils, and mungs. Split peas are obviously the main ingredient for split pea soup. You’ll want to simmer them until they mostly break apart—mixing with the cooking water to form a thick and creamy base. You can alternately simmer yellow splits or mung beans and before serving add roasted cumin seeds, curry powder, and salt to make dal—the most popular Indian soup.
Beans and Flatulence
Beans are impossible to beat when it comes to being a food that’s cheap, delicious, and healthful. About the only thing that stands in their way of world domination is their tendency to cause intestinal gas. Fortunately, there are various ways to mitigate or eliminate this problem. Beans cause flatulence because they contain a sugar that your body can’t readily digest. When the sugar reaches your intestines, bacteria feed on it to form gas.
The good news here is cooking dissolves a substantial portion of this sugar into the cooking water. So once your beans finish cooking, pour the cooking water down the drain. Then use fresh water to finish preparing your recipe. By doing this, you’ll make your beans much more digestible. The same thing goes for the water used for canned beans. Discard it and use fresh water and your meal will be far less gas-producing.
While thorough cooking will tend to improve digestibility, don’t overdo it or your beans will become mushy. Blending or mashing your beans for dishes like hummus or Mexican-style refrieds is another way to substantially improve digestibility.
How to Make Vegan Bean Dishes More Digestible
If these tips don’t yield satisfactory results, don’t give up until you’ve experimented with split peas and lentils. Many people who can’t tolerate a black bean burrito will find a thin yellow split pea dal creates no digestive problems whatsoever.
There’s also a product called Bean-Zyme that contains an enzyme that breaks down the sugars of beans. Depending on who you ask you’ll hear it’s miraculous, totally ineffective, or somewhere in between.
And finally, many people plagued by indigestion don’t realize that a little knowledge and attention can resolve lifelong difficulties. Specifically, your body’s digestive powers are at their peak at mid-day. So if you’re going to eat beans and other hard-to-digest foods, the early afternoon best time to do it. Ideally only eat these foods on an empty stomach when you’re truly hungry, and you’ll gain quicker digestion and less flatulence.
Where people get into trouble is when they eat late at night and when they eat something tough to digest when their digestive system is already busy working on food already eaten. Obviously the longer hard-to-digest foods take to pass through your intestines the more gas will form, so being genuinely hungry before you eat beans will help ensure they don’t hang out in your digestive tract for an undue amount of time.
Beans are an Ideal Vegan Food
Moving gracefully towards a plant-based diet depends on discovering delicious vegan foods to crowd out the meat, milk, and eggs you grew up eating. Bean-based meals can play a key role here, especially since they are among the most filling and protein-rich foods available. So give yourself every possible advantage when exploring the world of beans. Venture beyond pinto beans to explore the delicious, colorful, and tasty lesser-known varieties.
If you want to increase your bean consumption, don’t hesitate in an Instant Pot and a book on vegan bean cookery. Beans cost so little compared to other foods that you’ll quickly earn back this investment. And by incorporating more beans into your meals, your diet will become more diverse, healthful, and satisfying than ever before.
Now what about recipes? Most thick general-interest vegan cookbooks will offer plenty of bean recipes. And since beans play a huge role in Mexican cooking, you may want to pick up a vegan Mexican cookbook to explore that cuisine. On top of that, there are two different all-vegan cookbooks devoted entirely to the topic that will give you dozens and dozens of great new recipe ideas: The Great Vegan Bean Book and Vegan Beans from Around the World.
Even though beans are one of the simplest foods in existence, there’s a great deal to know about them. There’s likewise a lot to learn about rice, which offers the ideal complement to beans where flavor and protein is concerned. Since these two foods pair up perfectly, there’s really no way to get the most out of one without also learning about the other. So please check out our guide to rice, which will teach you how to provide your beans with a match made in heaven.
