Beans

Hi LTHers,

I'd like to make a sidedish tonight with white beans. I know I will need to soak the beans. Each of the recipes I have found suggests soaking the beans overnight. Will I do any damage to the recipe if I only soak the beans for, say, two to three hours?

Thanks,
Katy

K,

Do a quick soak: beans in cold water, bring to a boil, shut off heat, cover and let sit for an hour. Then, cook the beans in the normal fashion.

Antonius

Another thread on beans here

Hi,

In this article, there is a useful conversion chart of dried to rehydrated/cooked beans.

To work out that ratio, I started by taking six different varieties of dried beans—cannellini beans, red kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans, chickpeas, and black-eyed peas—and measured their volumes and weights both before and after cooking. (For more on how to cook dried beans, take a look at our step-by-step guide.) The good news is, while the conversions aren't perfectly consistent, they're close enough that we can come up with a handy rule of thumb: Most dried beans slightly more than double in both volume and weight once cooked.

Regards,

Cathy,

That article is pretty useful.

However, the author is comparing canned dark kidney beans with dry light kidney beans and claiming that there is a difference in the soaked beans. No kidding. The soaked beans look exactly like the light kidney beans that I have been finding.

I have noted in the West, dried beans are much easier to find than their canned counterparts.