Updated 3-16-2010
Overview of Bean Preparation: Ingredients & Equipment
Start with new crop dry beans. Dry beans that are more than 13 months old are not only less nutritious but harder to rehydrate, and therefore more difficult to cook completely. Reputable natural food warehouses and health foods stores with good turnover can provide delicious, healthy, and young dried beans. The best beans are brand new to 4 months old. Admittedly, this is hard to know. In general, older beans are darker and show more cracked skins and more splitting overall.
Choose your crockpot or stockpot carefully. It needs to be big enough so that the dry beans do not fill it more than 1/3. Otherwise, you will not be able to fit the amount of water required to cook them thoroughly.
If preparing lentils, navy (white) beans, black beans, or fava beans, you’ll also need 1 tablespoon of acid per cup of dry beans. If preparing chickpeas (garbanzo beans), you’ll need 2 tablespoons of acid per cup of dry beans. For the acid, use lemon juice, raw apple cider vinegar, or whey.
For all other beans, no acid is required, but adding a pinch of baking soda can be helpful.
Generally, 1 cup of dry beans will yield 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 cups of cooked beans. These are some common dry bean yields:
- 1 cup dry black beans —–> yields 3-1/2 cups when cooked
- 1 cup dry kidney beans —–> yields 3 cups when cooked
- 1 cup dry pinto beans —–> yields 3 cups when cooked
I will be sharing two easy methods for cooking beans properly: on the stovetop or in the crockpot. Both require that the beans start with a good, long soak.
Step 1: Soaking the Beans
Put dry beans in the cooking container (stockpot or crockpot). Fill with triple the amount of water as beans. Add 1 tablespoon of acid per cup of bean (for navy beans, black beans, or fava beans, or lentils) or 2 tablespoons of acid per cup of chickpeas (garbanzo beans). Optionally, add a pinch of baking soda to the water for all other beans.
In the Stockpot: Bring all to a light simmer, then turn off heat. Cover the pot and let beans soak a minimum of 7 hours, but preferably overnight or 12 to 24 hours.
In the Crockpot: Put the lid on the crock. Turn the crockpot to HIGH for 1/2 to 1 hour to warm up the mixture. Turn off the crockpot. Let beans soak a minimum of 7 hours, but preferably overnight or 12 to 24 hours.
Normally, bubbles and maybe a little scum appear on the top of the soaking water — rinse this all away. The beans should smell “beany”. If they smell rotten, rinse them really well, and then smell them again. If they still smell rotten, they probably are. Unfortunately, you’ll have to toss these beans and start again.
Step 2: Cooking the Beans
Drain and rinse the beans. Cover the beans in the stockpot or crockpot with water. The amount of water should be about double the volume of the beans, due to the beans rehydrating during the soaking.
In the Stockpot: Bring the bean/water mixture to a boil, then cover all or partially as the boil reduces to a constant simmer. Watch for foam, and skim as it appears. Boil gently until beans are tender — about an hour for soft beans, or an hour and a half for harder beans. Turn off the heat. Drain.
In the Crockpot: Turn the crockpot to high for one hour, then turn down to low for the duration of the cooking time. Skim foam occasionally, but quickly so as not to lose much heat. Cooking time depends on the crockpot’s heat output, but generally 8 to 12 hours cooking time is sufficient for most hard beans; soft beans such as lentils and peas will take less time. Turn off crockpot. Drain.
Note: Soft beans, such as lentils, peas, or split mung beans, will often be falling apart by the time they are tender. Therefore, when just starting out preparing these beans, it is advisable to follow a recipe that takes into account the proper amount of water for the desired food consistency.
For old beans that don’t seem to want to soften up, add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda or a piece of kombu (Japanese sea vegetable) to the cooking water to help them along. Either of these will help reduce the gas-producing properties of beans.
Seasoning the Beans
Here are some ideas for flavoring your beans.
Add flavor ingredients during the cooking, such as: spices; seasonings; turkey, chicken or ham bones; and/or broths — during the cooking, not the soaking. I do this if I’m adding soaked (but not cooked yet) beans to a soup; they cook right in the yummy flavors.
Add seasonings after the cooking. I do this if I’m taking cooked beans and adding them to a dish, such as beans & rice, or refried beans, even soup.
Just think of all the other seasonings you can use — herbs like basil, thyme, oregano; spices like cumin, paprika, cayenne; salt, pepper and oil; foods like onion, ginger or garlic. Add any of these either during the cooking or after the cooking when incorporating the beans into a dish.
Uses For Beans
While you’re making beans, why not make up a big batch? Use some immediately or in the days to come, and freeze the rest for later! Here are some of my favorite recipes:
- Refried Beans
- Fasooli (Arabic White Bean Stew)
- Seasoned Black Beans
- Pinto Bean Spread
- Black Bean Spread
- Split Mung Bean Soup
- Cold Grain Salads
- Baked Burritos
- Rice Bowls
- Basic Chili
- Creamy Black Bean Chili
- Company Chili
- Garden Lentil Patties
- Hummus
- Great Northern Bean Stew
- Minty Beef and Lentil Stew
- Ginger, Chicken, Rice and Lentil Soup
- Mujadareh (Arabic Lentil and Brown Rice Stew)
- 12-Bean Soup
More Information
This article includes information from the article, Putting the Polish on Those Humble Beans at the Weston A. Price Foundation website, as well as information from the book, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon Morell.
© Copyright 2006-2010 by Wardee Harmon
About Wardee Harmon
New: 
Two hard 'g's and stress the middle syllable. 
I followed these directions (well, kinda…) for soaking and cooking my black beans (first time ever doing using dry beans!!) but left out an important step… rinsing and covering the soaked beans with fresh filtered water for cooking. I totally missed the rinsing part, so the acidic water was still in there when I cooked them all day. Do you think it’s still okay to eat? I think they taste alright, maybe have a little “bite” to them, but I’m okay with that, as long as it’s not going to be harmful to eat. What do you think?
Carrie – Yes, I think you can use them. Just please do discard the soaking/cooking water as it will contain all the undesirables. Do you think they could stand more cooking? Like even for 15 minutes to half hour? If so, just simmer them for a bit longer in clean water to finish them off. I don’t know if that’s what you mean by “bite” or not. If they can’t take any more cooking, then go ahead and use the beans but not the water.
I don’t think they could be cooked any longer, they are pretty soft and almost mushy already. And there was hardly any cooking “water” (more like black goo?) left to drain anyway. Now I’ve learned for next time! I can’t wait for these new skills become second-nature! I’m definitely always learning some important lesson with each new thing I try, and sometimes it can be a little disheartening to always be messing something up. But as my husband said, at least it wasn’t a steak that I just messed up! Anyway, thanks so much for your help.
When you speak of adding acid, I am assuming it is something like lemon juice or vinegar. Am I right? Would I add that to Pintos also, or just the other beans mentioned ie. navy? Thank you for all your help. I certainly enjoy your newsletters.
We have been soaking the beans for two days. My husband put some vinegar and because I didn’t know I put some sourdough starter. Yesterday in the night they were cooking for 6 hours. Today we have beans “hard as stones” (well, not as stones, but nearly). Any one has any idea of what went wrong and why? any way to sort it out now? It is a complete mistery!
Magan — What kind of beans are they? Not all beans need an acid added to the soaking water. Also with the addition of double the acid, it could prevent them from toughening up — this is some people don’t use acid at all.
Did you drain and rinse them well, to get all the acid out, before cooking?
Finally, do you know how old the beans are? Older beans will not soften up as easily. If they’re too old, they won’t soften up at all. You could add some baking soda to the cooking water to help them soften up.
They are red beans, but the amount of acid wasn’t excessive (I thought it could have something to do with the mix of different types of acid), he put a couple of tablespoons of vinegar and I put one tablespoon of sourdough starter , (for 3 or 4 cups of dried beans). I rinsed the beans the next day for cooking and left them back in water, we didn’t cook them that day, so they were 24 hours more in water and were again rinsed before cooking (total 2 days).
My main fear is if they are old, I hope that is not the reason, we buy in bulk and this is a new bag, just opened, we have 5 kilos remaining
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How do you do it with the baking soda, would you add it to the water soaking and then rinse it? or would you soak it normally and then add it to the cooking water and then rinse them, once they are cooked? My main concern with the baking soda is that we find it very strong the taste to whatever I have tried to add it to, it hasn’t really worked for us in the house, any recipe with baking soda and mi husband will be the first one noticing the taste even if the measure is exactly what was in the recipe. Would it leave any kind of aftertaste?
In the past I have always soaked kidney beans and then boiled them rapidly, changed the water, brought to the boil again and then simmered. This was to rid the beans of some poisonous substances. Why is this not necessary? Is is because I’m now soaking them in warm water? Or cooking them for longer? I would greatly appreciate your response to these questions and would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for this website – a great resource on this new direction in my nutritional journey!
I really blew it. I guess I didn’t soak the beans long enough. Here is what I did.
Simmered in water for 1 hour. I let them sit for an hour in the water, drained, Added all the makings for baked beans thinking they would soften a little while baking 90 minutes @ 350. I added a few cups extra water. I took them to another location and baked them @ 325 for another 2 hours. Then added some additional water and baked for almost 2 more hours. They were still hard. They are now in the crockpot for 3 hrs on high and they still are very firm. Have they beaten me?