Do you like to cook dried beans? And eat them? I do, and I always have. I grew up eating them at home, cooked by my mother. Pinto beans, black-eyed peas, navy beans, great northerns, big white lima beans... among others. When I was in college, I lived on baked beans and frankfurters for a couple of years, because there wasn't much else in the cafeteria that tempted me. Now, in France, Walt and I eat a lot of beans — in cassoulet, for example, with duck, or with sausages.
The problem is that the beans don't always cook up as tender as I want them to be. The skins stay tough. CHM has the same problem in Paris. We've decided it must be the tap water in France. CHM actually brought some red kidney beans from the U.S. this summer. He had cooked some of them over there, and they were perfectly tender. He cooked the same beans in Paris tap water, and they came out with tough skins. The water in France as here in the Loire Valley is very calcaire. In English, that means it's "hard" water.
Some cookbook authors and friends suggest putting a pinch or two of baking soda (bicarbonate alimentaire) into the water you soak or cook beans in. I don't do that, and some of the beans I cook — black-eyed peas, for example — turn out very tender. Others don't. Some say to put some vinegar in the soaking or cooking water. There is wide agreement that the beans should not be salted until the very end of the cooking, because salt toughens the skins.
Yesterday, I did an experiment — I cooked a pound of white lingot beans (a.k.a. cannellini) in what I'd call distilled water. It's sold as eau déminéralisée at the supermarket here in Saint-Aignan. I didn't even bother soaking them first. I just cooked them for about 3 hours. I think the result is very good. Maybe that's the answer. Have you ever cooked dried beans in mineral water? Would that give the same result? That will be my next experiment.
Ginette Mathiot, author of Je sais cuisiner, a French homecooking classsic, writes: Quand l'eau est trop calcaire, les légumes secs durcissent à la cuisson. On met dans l'eau un peu de bicarbonate de soude. In English: "When the water is too hard, the beans harden during cooking. Add a little bit of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)."
ReplyDeleteIn the Joy of Cooking, Irma Rombauer writes: “Dried legumes... are temperamental... The cooking time [for dried beans and peas] depends on the locality in which they were grown and on their age — usually two unknowns for the cook; plus the type of water used in cooking them... Wash [the beans] unless the package states otherwise. Do not use soda... Soak in three to four times as much water as beans. Remove any beans that float. If the beans are not preprocessed, usually they are soaked overnight. Bring the beans to a slow boil in the water in which they were soaked, unless it is bitter...”
No consensus there.
As for vinegar, Harold McGee writes: "Acidic cooking liquids slow... the softening process." Also: "Hard water... reinforces the bean cell walls. It can therefore slow the softening of the beans or even prevent them from softening fully." And: "...when beans are soaked in salted water, they acually cook much faster..." Finally: "The alkalinity of baking soda can give an unpleasant slippery mouth feel and soapy taste..." to the beans.
ReplyDeleteThe Larousse Gastronomique (1967) advises on the subject of dried white beans: Avant de les faire cuire à l'eau... il est d'usage de les faire tremper à l'eau longuement. Ce procédé... est mauvais en soi. Si l'on veut faire tremper des haricots... il faut que cette opération soit brève... il suffit de les laisser de une heure et demie à deux heures dans de l'eau froide. On peut également... avec des légumes de l'année, et de bonne qualité, les faire cuire sans les avoir préalablement fait tremper. In other words, soak the dried beans for no more than 2 hours in cold water before cooking them, or don't soak them at all if they aren't more than a year old and are of good quality. Just cook them.
I have always used baking soda both for soaking and cooking red kidney beans with great success. Recently, I read that putting alcohol vinegar in the soaking liquid and wine vinegar in the cooking liquid helps prevent inconvenient side effects, if you see what I mean. And it seems to be working. Maybe there is a proportion that is important to strictly follow?
ReplyDeleteHow can you know how old are the beans you buy in a grocery store?
On a different note the French carottes Vichy are cooked in Vichy mineral water for some reason unknown to me.
I have the same issue when I cook beans in the house in Kentucky. I suspect calcium in the water. Distilled water has most of the minerals removed, and should work better.
ReplyDeleteThis from the Grand Larousse Gastronomique (2007):
ReplyDeleteharicots secs : cuisson
Faire tremper les haricots 2 heures dans de l'eau froide. Les égoutter, jeter
l'eau de trempage. Les mettre dans une grande casserole, les recouvrir
largement d'eau froide, porter doucement à ébullition, écumer ; saler
à mi-cuisson. Ajouter 1 bouquet garni, 1 oignon épluché et piqué de
2 clous de girofle, 1 gousse d'ail pelée et 1 carotte grattée et coupée en
petits dés. Couvrir et cuire de 1 h 30 à 2 h 30 à toute petite ébullition.
No mention of vinegar or bicarbonate of soda.
About the side effects, Rick Bayliss, a Chicago chef and restaurateur who specializes in Mexican foods and cooking, writes: "Mexican cooks don't soak beans because they know that throwing out the soaking liquid isn't a very good idea. It doesn't do much to make them more digestible (only a steady diet of beans helps with that), and it makes the beans turn out pale in color and in flavor."
As the Joy of Cooking book says, the age of the dried beans we buy and the conditions under which they were grown are basically unknowable factors. The white beans I bought a month or so ago say they should be consumed by December 2018, and a bag of pinto beans that I didn't even remember I had, so nobody knows when I bought them, says to use them by February 2019.
Well, this is all very interesting, and I'm intrigued. I'll be interested to see what your future experiments show.
ReplyDeleteJudy
I live in Brooklyn. After soaking my beans overnight and putting them in the pot in the morning, I do add a teaspoon of baking soda which I cook with the beans for about 5 minutes stirring for a few minutes. Then I add the water and cook normally. That does the trick for me, but I think you have a good point about the water. You may want to try that trick the next time, my guess cheaper (and easier) than buying water every time you want to cook them. Another idea, I know you have a slow cooker, you might want to try cooking them in that. Best of luck.
ReplyDeleteI cooked a batch of these beans (same brand but maybe older maybe not) in the slow cooker a couple of months ago. I overcooked them, I think, by leaving them in the cooker for too long, so they were mushy. Even so, the skins were fairly tough. Much tougher than the skins on the beans that cooked for a much shorter time yesterday. Using the "demineralized" water gave a much better result. The water doesn't cost much, in the grand scheme of things. We usually have a five-liter container of it in the house.
DeleteI don't cook beans very often, but I do love them in many forms. Here is a link to website (and online store) that has so much information about beans: https://www.ranchogordo.com/pages/cooking-basic-beans-in-the-rancho-gordo-manner. You may enjoy exploring it. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that site. Here's a live link to it. I thought this point about vinegar etc. was interesting: "Many believe that adding salt (or acids like tomatoes and vinegar) too early in the cooking process prevents the beans from getting soft. We find this especially true with older beans." So be careful with vinegar in cooking or soaking beans. I think the best solution is using distilled, demineralized water. I'm going to try a batch of these same white beans in French mineral water to see what result that give.
DeleteOne of the strangest things is that CHM told he bought and cooked black-eyed peas in the U.S., and they turned out to be nearly inedible because the skins were so tough. Here in Saint-Aignan, I cook black-eyed peas often and they are the most consistently tender beans I cook and eat here. The ones I get come from Portugal, but there's no indication on the packaging as to where they are grown.
They are Good For Your Heart :)
ReplyDeleteThe musical fruit...
DeleteI love beans too! Lima, black-eyed peas, and field peas being my favorites. Those small dried field peas taste amazing like fresh to me once they are cooked. I read somewhere that putting salt in the water when you start to cook them will toughen beans. I always season them when they are almost done and I think it helps a lot. Still sometimes the beans are old and no matter what you do they are going to be tough. I like the idea of cooking them distilled or spring water. I'm sure it is better than the treated municipal water.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to tell you that those french fires in the your last post looked as though they were cooked to perfection! That whole plate was mouth watering! I have bought boneless chicken thighs and cooked them in Smithfield BBQ sauce trying to mimic BBQ and they were delicious! I will try turkey legs the next time I see any. Turkey parts used to be a supermarket staple, but I don't see them as often these days at least not at the Food Lion. I don't know how that store is going to fare when the Walmart Superstore opens in the Boro. Locals fought it tooth and nail, but they didn't have much of a chance against Walmart. It is going to be located at the corner of Hammocks Beach Road and 24. Can't say I am looking forward to the all the congestion. It's bad enough as it is!
Another Walmart! There's already one in Morehead, another in Newport, and there have to be one or two in the Jacksonville area. Weren't they planning to put one in Cape Carteret or Cedar Point.
DeleteI love field peas too, but I have to bring those back from N.C. I get them at Food Lion. They cook quickly and turn out tasty and tender, almost like lentils. Lentils are really good and easy to cook too.
I like your idea of cooking boneless chicken thighs with eastern N.C. barbecue sauce. It's interesting that you can't get turkey leg-thigh pieces there. They are always available here. Whole turkeys are a different story, though; they're only available around Christmastime unless you special-order them (that's an expensive alternative).
Make that french fries...not fires! Maybe I should have tried to have typed frites!
ReplyDeleteI've always understood that the vinegar is to prevent the beans from causing flatulence.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you need a water filter? A little basic Berkey, the old hippie standby, could do it.
As I said in my comment above vinegar seems to be very efficient for that specialq purpose.
DeleteSee my comment about cooking beans with vinegar, above. Well, not mine, but the recommendation of a bean specialist. Emm, maybe the answer is a water filter. And English friend bought a Brita water filter here in France because she said the local water "furred up" the inside of her electric kettle so quickly. I should probably be making tea and coffee with a water filter. My sister in N.C. told me a few years ago that she had started buying water to make coffee with.
DeleteVery interesting link.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact, the only beans I ever cook in the U.S. are the red kidney beans and I never stray away very much from my recipe which is my own rendition of the French haricots rouges au lard fumé. To replace smoked pork I don’t seem to find at my grocery store, I use smoked Kielbasa, the Polish saussage, with great success. Since I’m and old ivrogne, I use more red (American burgundy?) wine than water for the cooking liquid. To the overnight soaked beans and diced Kielbasa sausage, I add some baking soda and some red wine vinegar. For health reasons, I never use salt in whatever I am cooking (or very little if it’s absolutely necessary). No salt, but a lot of ground black pepper, some dried thyme and one or two Mareuil’s bay leaves (the best!). I cook the beans either on the stove or in the slow cooker.