Cooking with Dry Beans and Peas

Casie, you have a basic recipe for that?   I suddenly got the urge for baked beans!

You might regret asking, my family is notorious for being able to break simple things down into many tiny steps. I feel a little silly, as I don't know if it actually qualifies as a recipe, but I've tried to separate the process into individual steps. I'm one of those people who cook by eye and smell, so there's no actual measurements.  There's a reason why I'm not the baker in the family.

I throw the beans in water that covers it by at least two inches heat till boiling, turn off the heat and then leave to soak for several hours. Often this starts the day before I actually cook them.

After the soaking I heat the pot back to boiling, add a whole diced onion and simmer until the beans begin to soften. This takes some time though adding a little baking soda helps a lot.

When they are almost soft enough, I add many spoonfulls of minced garlic,ideally every bite of bean should have a few tiny pieces. I add the ginger until I can smell it through the garlic. I like their flavors to be close to equally strong.

I leave the whole mixture on simmering until the beans are completely softened. I like them soft enough to mash if I want but firm enough to stay as separate beans on the plate. Then I add salt till the cooking liquid is a little saltier than my tastes. Like potatoes, the beans will actually absorb a lot of salt from the liquid so the final result isn't oversalt.

At that point it's just waiting for them to be cool enough to eat. You can eat them by themselves or add other seasonings and fixings to make more recipes.

I'm pretty sure the actual Boston Baked Bean recipes have more steps to add a molasses based sauce, but that would be one of the 'more recipes' I'm far more likely to eat my beans plain or with added savory ingredients.

Have you guys seen this article about cooking beans from scratch?



It's a simple little article about choosing, soaking (or not), and cooking dry beans.

I had never heard about brining the beans while they soak or adding a strip of combo.  I am going to give both a go!

My schedule this year has been a bit erratic, leading me to purchasing too much commercial food and not enough home cooking.  I started remedying that a few weeks ago with a giant batch of black beans, which I essentially turned into dip and froze in half-pint jars.   I've been pulling those out and topping them with a bit of fermented cortido for an instant (and cheap) burrito bowl.   I also rediscovered that burritos, including breakfast burritos(!!!) are freezable and reheat nicely.  So, black beans have also been playing a staring role in those.  

I too like growing beans. We usually have 5 different varieties in the garden. If I get two seasons worth of a bean dehydrated and put up I like to add a new variety in their place in the garden. The last one I added was the Cherokee Trail of Tears, I have to say I love it. The plants are stocky and full, the bean pods are beautiful and the beans themselves are gorgeous and flavorful. So glad we added these. I want to try Cannellini beans next because we like the thick broth they make. Our gardens are all about preserving rare and heritage breeds of all veggies we plant. Have a great day!

The poisons in pulses referred to by several here mostly fall into two classes; lectins and phytates.  While soaking and or cooking can destroy some of them, it typically doesn't get 'em all.   For those who are sensitive to legumes (you know who you are - I'm one)  even soaking and slow cooking will not prevent gas and bloating.  For us, home grown meat is a far better source of protein.  
From a health perspective, the  greater issue with pulses are the high amounts of calories from carbohydrates they contain.  Modern agriculture has transformed millions of acres of diverse native habitat into sterile monocrops of grains and beans (as to the latter, mostly soy). This has allowed us to consume far more calories from carbs than ever before in human history.  And its consuming excess calories from carbs that make us fat, not calories from fat - which goes a long ways to explain the current obesity and diabetic epidemic (just say No! to Big Foods onslaught on our health and the health of our ecosystems).  This is because historically calories from carbs were a rare item in the human diet so our bodies evolved to store those calories as fat.  Saturated fat, on the other hand, was available year 'round from game animals and so our bodies evolved to utilize fat right away.

I really enjoy sprouting lentils and peas.  In the above image I am stir frying some spouted peas with some onions.  I like using them in soups and on top of pizza.  

What happens to the "poisons" when pulses are sprouted? We have no ill effects from eating pulses.

There are lots of species of pulses. Some are much more poisonous than others. My general guideline is that those that have a reputation for being eaten raw have low toxicity, and those that have a reputation for being cooked until mushy have high toxicity. Raw lupini beans, and raw tepary bean pods are among the nastiest tasting things that I have ever eaten.

There has been a lot of posts about cooking pulses... I have a question about growing them.  Anyone here grow lentils?  I can't eat most beans, but I seem to be able to tolerate lentils.  Buying them here in Kenya, for whatever reason, is really expensive.  (A kg of lentils cost more than a kg. of beef.)  I have never grown them, I know nothing, I never even ate them in my life until a year ago.  How much would you have to plant to harvest enough to make it worth the effort?  I have a HUGE family to feed.  Do you grow them the same way you would a bean?  If I buy a bag of supermarket lentils, is there any chance they'll germinate?  (Its not grown here locally, so no where to source the seed.  Either supermarket, or import seed from the US.)  

Another question:  Anyone familiar with the bambura groundnut?  Those are grown here, but on a very small scale.  I have no idea what to do with them.  They taste like a peanut flavored bean.  We mix them in a corn and bean dish called githeri, which is basically what my dad would have called "succotash" in the US.  But aside from that, I am at a loss of what to do with it once harvest.  Its supposed to be super nutritious, and it tolerates the worst growing conditions... but what the heck will I do with it?

Last question:  Anyone growing pigeon peas?  I planted some from a supermarket bag, and they are growing happily, but haven't flowered yet.  I have heard that they have to be soaked for at least two days to be edible.  I looked online for recipes, but just kept coming across different versions the same Caribbean rice and peas recipe.  Apparently nobody grows them here any more, and I'm wondering why?  Are they awful?  I also heard that the green peas can be used as chicken food.  Anybody know?

Maureen Atsali
ASF Farm - Kenya
actualmaureen@yahoo.com

Those are great questions.  We have a thread about growing lentils here.  I haven't tried the other ones yet. If you don't get a response here, feel free to start a thread about each of them in the growies section.  

I'm a fan of the flavor given up by the following week long prep.  (It takes a week, but I think the hands-on actual time cost is about 15 minutes, as long as you can prop the container up to drain without you having to stand there and wait for it to stop dripping)

5 cups of dried beans get submerged in water for 24 hours.  Drain, rinse and drain again.  Cover with a clean moist towel.

Rinse and drain again every 12 hours.  I usually give it 4 days, so most of the beans have nice sprouts (pintos are slow sprouters... and I discovered by trial and error, piling beans more than ~3" deep for sprouting results in the bottom not getting enough air, and not doing much sprouting)

Put them in a pot, add 4 cups of water.  Bring to a boil, stir, then reduce heat and simmer with a heavy lid on for 45 minutes (this puts out some serious froth and loves to boil over, gotta get that low heat just right to not make a mess...) Stir 4 or 5 times throughout.  Don't forget to put the lid back on.

Remove from heat, let cool to room temperature.

Add 1 C of live liquid from a brined vegetable ferment, 1/2 cup olive oil, 2 t of salt.  

Mash with a potato masher for a few minutes, then blend with an immersion blender for a few minutes, until smooth (or you can hand mash for like a half hour...)

Let sit for a 24 hours.  Stir.

Let sit for 24 hours.  Stir.

Repeat once more.

Add any spices you fancy, stir and refrigerate.  I usually just hit it with some curry paste, looking forward to trying some different pestos before too long.  I made too much curry paste.  WASTE NOT!

After another week in the refrigerator, it begins to remind me more of a savory yogurt than beans.  I've eaten it after its been in the fridge for 4 weeks, thus the batch to fill a large pot.  Only the part exposed to air will sprout mold and spoil for a month or more in the fridge,  underneath the surface it gets increasingly sour and creamy. I have been doing it with Pinto beans because I purchased a 25lb bag around Christmas last year.  5lbs to go!  A few more batches and I get to start experimenting with different beans. oOOo goody!  The kind of person who enjoys reading for 30 minutes about cooking beans.  Gonna have to try the baking soda and Cassoulet...

We have a new thread about making and using chickpea flour.  I would love your thoughts.

One of the things mentioned early in this thread is the nasty taste and indigestibility of raw bean flours.  I'm especially eager to avoid this.  

this peasant bean stew looks good.  i bet it would be even better with bacon.

The description of the recipe evoked a romantic vision of port wives sweeping up any grains, legumes and spices dropped from holes in the sacks destined to to Genoa.  They would wash them off and the toss them into a simmering pot for dinner.

...

Let your fantasy, and pantry, dictate what you will use in your own soup. You could use any beans, grain and spice.  The recipe used cannelllini and chickpeas, farro or buckwheat, and finished with a grind of pepper at the end.  The grains of Farro seemed to get lost in all of those round and plump beans so I chose barley.

It snowed this week, enough that I had to shovel the driveway.  First time in four years.

Split pea soup made with ham bone stock... Got me through it.  

Leftover ham bone or smocked ham hock boiled with veg to make a jelly.  Strain and keep liquid.  Add peas and bring slowly to a boil.  Simmer on low until peas are mush.  Add copious amounts of salt.

The soup of my childhood.

The international year of the pulse is comming to an end in a few days.

What did you learn about pulses this year?  What did you teach?  What new beans or peas have you tried cooking?

Anyone else cooking beans to calibrate the new year?

I didn't get any dry beans planted in the garden this year, but I definitely will next year. But I ate far more dry beans this year than I ever have - making my own black beans for Mexican food is so much better than using canned. I have to sneak beans into TM's food, 'cause he says he doesn't like them. But if I cook them down to unrecognizable mush in a soup or stew he doesn't know they're there, so I think it's the texture he doesn't like.

I learned quite a bit from this thread, as well as from reading Carol Deppe's 'The Resilient Gardener'. The long soaking and stirring she suggests really makes a difference. And adding a bit of acid just before eating - I like to add some lemon vinegar - really brings out the flavor. I like to eat a bowl with just a little lemon vinegar, butter and a touch of salt. Nice.

So, I'm definitely sold on beans, and am eating them in more and more dishes. Also, next year I'll be trialling a couple different soup peas. TM likes split pea soup, and I like mushy peas. So that's another thing to add more of to our diet. I'm hoping to cut back on the meat we eat. Well, I'm cutting back on the meat I eat. It'll take a little longer for the man.

Verdict: Pulses made their way into my food far more often than they every have, and I enjoyed them very much.

Does any one know what to do with pigeon peas?  How to cook them, what they are good in? Are the pods edible?  I'm about to get my first harvest... and its huge... and I have no idea what to do with them - being that I never even heard of them until I came to Africa.

Maureen Atsali wrote:Does any one know what to do with pigeon peas?  How to cook them, what they are good in? Are the pods edible?  I'm about to get my first harvest... and its huge... and I have no idea what to do with them - being that I never even heard of them until I came to Africa.

I was looking at growing these in 2017.

Look up indian and carribbean cooking, they use a lot of them. Or use them as a substitute for black eyed peas in recipes.

"pigeon pea = goongoo pea = gunga pea = gungo pea = congo pea = congo bean = no-eyed peas = gandules    Shopping hints:   These are usually sold dried, but fresh, frozen, and canned peas also are available.  They have a strong flavor, and they're popular in the South and in the Caribbean.   Substitutes:  yellow-eyed peas OR black-eyed peas"

I was going to buy a bag of them off Amazon and use those for seed. They are a high protein and adapt to drought climate. Often grown as a grown cover and animal fodder I'm told.

https://www.amazon.com/Goya-Gandules-Pigeon-Peas-14oz/dp/B004SNJI1M/ref=ice_ac_b_dpb?ie=UTF8&qid=1483093894&sr=8-2&keywords=pigeon+peas  

Again I was led by earlier research to look for Indian dishes and stuff from the Carribbean, where a lot of Africans were forcibly relocated, and brought their foods and cuisines. Originated in Indian peninsula and travelled to West Africa. Drought resistant, can be grown where there is less than 6.5 cm of rain a year... or under 3" of rain. I need stuff that can survive drought and HOT dry summers with peeled sun at altitude (hence I adore Joseph Lofthouse's seeds, I tried them 2016 and boy they grow)

Hi Deb
Well, I bought mine as a package of supermarket food, because I couldn't find seeds any where.  I planted them in the worst possible soil, in the worst possible places, and we are in the middle of our seasonal drought - and they are very happy, green, putting out flowers and seeds, completely un-phased by the weather, the crappy dirt, or anything else.

I had also heard that they make good animal fodder, and that was one of the main reasons I planted it, but our animals don't seem to care for it.  

Maureen Atsali wrote:Hi Deb
Well, I bought mine as a package of supermarket food, because I couldn't find seeds any where.  I planted them in the worst possible soil, in the worst possible places, and we are in the middle of our seasonal drought - and they are very happy, green, putting out flowers and seeds, completely un-phased by the weather, the crappy dirt, or anything else.

I had also heard that they make good animal fodder, and that was one of the main reasons I planted it, but our animals don't seem to care for it.  

The 'lousy dirt' and 'lousy weather' is why I am buying a bag. Sometimes the animals have to learn to eat it just like we do. I think though for grazing it's green vines not podset.

To commemorate the International Year of Pulses, I grew lots of pulses that I haven't grown previously.

I grew fenugreek as transplants. They didn't thrive in my garden, but I harvested seeds from them, and intend to direct seed them next spring.  

I acquired and planted two landraces of cowpeas. Some of them did great for me, so I was able to select for a cowpea landrace that grows on my farm.

I acquired a tepary bean landrace, and grew it along side my tepary beans, so that greatly improved the genetic diversity of my tepary beans.

I planted lentils from the grocery store. They grew well, and produced a decent crop. The area where they were growing went into winter as a huge volunteer patch of lentils.

I collected seeds from some of my wild pulses: alfalfa, blak medik, and yellow klover. I made a perennial bed of red klover.

I continued growing the species that I have been growing for years: common beans, runner beans, favas, garbanzos, soup peas. They grew great. I also grew shelling peas, but as usual, the pea weevils severely infekted the crop, so jermination of seed is extreemly low.

I sent most of my harvest of dry common beans to a cannery, and they came back to me canned in two  pound cans and ready to eat. Some came back as chili.

Tepary Beans:

Joseph - I'd really like to plant/grow/eat lentils... I think I asked this on another thread, but I never got an answer.  Its a bit off topic, but maybe you or someone else here can help me out.  How many lentils do you have to plant to get a harvest that's worth it - given they are so small?  I have a big family (6 plus an employee) and we eat at least a 1/2 kg of lentils (dry weight) at one meal.  I am wondering if it will be worth the effort.  I hate when I take up a huge amount of farm, and work the whole season for something that then only yields one or two meals.  On the other hand, lentils are weirdly expensive here, more than $3.50 USD per kg, so if I could grow it, and get a reasonable harvest, it would certainly save us a lot on our food budget.  

Wow, those lentils are expensive.  Are they locally grown, all certified organic?  That's what our local lentils cost, but the bulk bin full of generic lentils is usually much less.

Depending on where you live, your soil, how much sun, the rain patterns, time of year for planting... you may need a small area or a large one.  Different varieties will yield differently in different locations.

Short answer:  Grow a few different varieties this spring and see what works well for you and your location.  This will give you a good idea how much space you want to dedicate to lentils.


Long answer: I'll dig out my books and see if I can find some estimates for you.  In the meantime, we have a thread all about growing lentils.

Statistics Canada pegs average lentil yields at 1,296 pounds per acre which seams low to me.

I got about 1 kilo from a 16-foot row of  green lentils.  I planted them too close together, so I could probably double that with proper spacing and thinning.  I could probably increase yield if I planted them several rows beside each other to increase pollination.  I'm not a huge fan of eating lentils, so I'm moving more towards chickpea growing.  However, those green lentils sure were tasty and easy to process.  I've been thinking of giving them another try this year.

One thing I liked about lentils is that they grow well in the shoulder season.  When I harvest my lentils, it's perfect timing to plant my overwinter collards and leeks.

I had a surprise find this morning. I was clearing the last of the old vines from the peach trees and found a few bean pods I had missed. It was my first time growing tepary, and they weren't very productive. I now have more beans harvested than I planted. I'll replant these next year and hope they're better adapted for my conditions. Interesting thing is that unlike most beans when I forget and leave them in the pod, these didn't mold or mildew.

At my place, the most productive pulses, in weeded beds, seems like common beans.

Last year, the first time I grew lentils, I harvested about 400 grams of dry lentils from a 15 foot row. I pull whole plants, and hit them against the inside of a garbage can to thresh, so labor for harvesting isn't a serious detriment.

Thanks for the feed back on lentil yields.  I am going to try some when the next growing season starts, perhaps as an intercrop.  At least they'll add some nitrogen, even if it doesn't feed the hungry masses.  I don't have a source for seeds, so I'll just plant another bag out of the supermarket.

That price (3.50 per kg) is NOT for local/organic.  Nothing is marketed as local or organic anyway, that hasn't "caught on" here yet.  It is especially shocking if you consider that the average daily wage of a Kenyan is less than 1.50 per DAY.   SO that is 3.50 for a kg bag of regular supermarket pulses.  Most Kenyans (at least in my rural village) do  not even know what a lentil is, I believe they exist in the supermarkets solely for the large Indian population in town.  Nobody is growing it, so you can't find it in the open-air markets where other cheap pulses are found.  Kenyans prefer common beans and green grams (mung beans).  I have a hard time digesting those, although I may take an idea from this thread and try sprouting the mung beans and eating them that way.

My mother-in-law's pigs got all my legumes this season - except the peanuts and the pigeon peas.  They ate every single pod of my beans and cowpeas, and left the bushes in tact.  Putting up fences is on my to-do list in 2017.

Let us know how your lentils grow.

Just a heads up, lentils are a cool weather crop.  Some prefer to overwinter, but most like being planted in the early spring, about the same time as peas.

I found this article today, it includes a very simple recipe for bean and pasta soup.



It uses chickpeas, but I imagine you can use different kinds of beans depending on your mood.  

The ingredients include

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
3 tablespoons good tomato paste
1 teaspoon kosher salt, or more to taste
1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas (or one 15-ounce can, drained and rinsed)
1/2 cup uncooked ditalini pasta (or another small shape, like macaroni)
2 cups boiling water
Crushed red pepper flakes, for serving

I think I'll make a variation on this for lunch today.  I have a big pot of white beans cooked and I saved the cooking liquid because it's delicious and nutritious.  I'll replace the chickpeas with the white beans, the water with the bean cooking liquid.  I'm not certain if I have any tomatoes or tomato paste on hand, so I may just replace that with extra garlic.  

Looks like it's going to cost about $1.50 (or 75 cents if I don't have tomatoes) for the whole pot of soup and last several days.  

There was a question earlier about how much space we need to grow pulses.

This is paraphrased from Dan Jason's book, The Power of Pulses (p. 41)

10 feet of climbing peas: more than 4 pounds
20 feet bush peas: 4 pounds
10 feet of climbing beans: more than 4 pounds
20 feet of bush beans: 4 pounds
20 feet of chickpeas: 4-6 pounds
10 feet of favas: more than 4 pounds
20 feet of lentils: 2 pounds

The first number is how long a row.  So for climbing peas, a 10 foot row gives at least 4 pounds.

Jason surmises that 3 to 4 plants (of any pulse save lentils) will "provide enough for a good meal for a family of four."

Of course, these numbers vary depending on the location, soil, weather, and all sorts of other factors.  It makes a good starting place when you're learning to grow pulses.  With personal experience, you'll get an idea of just how much you can grow in your conditions.  

R Ranson, thanks for putting up that yield information.  I don't know if I agree that 4 plants can provide a "good meal"... at least not here.  But even in nice fertile Vermont soils I don't think I got a meal out of four plants.  Heh, or maybe we just eat too much.  Here the soils are crap... I don't even consider it soil, but poor dirt, except in a few places where I've done a lot of ammendments.  I think I'll be lucky if I get half the yields you stated.  But its worth a try... cover up some naked dirt, add some nitrogen, and maybe get a few meals if I am lucky.  I can't wait for April... the drought here is just like a winter in the USA...

I just finished reading the entire thread.
Does anyone else can their beans? I thought it was silly when I first heard of it but after trying,I'm a huge fan. I do a whole bunch at a time and then I have ready to use beans whiteout the canned flavor of grocery store beans for a fraction of the cost.
I just ordered about 75 lbs of beans off Amazon. Their grocery prices are going down. I live in a small town and the produce stand where I did buy great varieties of dried beans in bulk recently closed.
I do still have a produce stand that sells shelled limas and cowpeas,they freeze a lot to continue selling in winter. Two different varieties of limas,the green and the speckled. One of our favorite meals is simply boiled limas with a little olive and garlic and a bit of butter. I sometimes put some Parmesan on mine.
We love shelled cowpeas the same way and also love them cooked with collard greens or kale.
I'll try growing some pole varieties of both here this year since they seem to be the best pulses for our area. I would love to have enough space to grow all of our bean needs but we eat a lot of beans and I doubt I could do it,even if I used up the entire horse pasture.
Deb-have you tried cowpeas and teperaries? I would think they'd be better suited for your area then pigeon peas.
I'd love to grow a perennial like pigeon peas but in zone 8a I don't think it would work.

Tracy West wrote:Deb-have you tried cowpeas and teperaries? I would think they'd be better suited for your area then pigeon peas.
I'd love to grow a perennial like pigeon peas but in zone 8a I don't think it would work.

I have gotten seed for both and will be trying them this year. I got cowpeas from Joseph Lofthouse... he does landrace and selects for taste, production, and will grow in his high desert climate with minimal care... his stuff really grows.

R Ranson wrote:While we are at it.  I'm seeking an awesome recipe for dried soup peas.  

I saved a whole bunch of peas from my Japanese Climbing Snow Pea last year and I really want to give them a try... only no pea recipes.  

These are my favourite pea plant so far.  The tendrils and leaves are delicious and tender.  The pods sweet and long harvest.  The dry peas are also edible.  And they help add nitrogen to the soil.  And they help add biomass to the soil at the end of the season.  AND they are beautiful.  

Any good recipes for dry soup peas?

Though i haven't tried this recipe yet, it sounds interesting. My friend Soren (Toad) shared this recipie on his blog. It's how to cook old style "grey peas" which i guess are a special (and now rare) type of soup or starchy pea also commonly known as "marrowfat peas", Starchy peas. Mushy Peas, etc. The only two known varieties i know of that might work for these and might be sold online are called "monk peas" and Biskopens (aka sweedish red). I'd love to try these with Biskopens sometime!

https://toads.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/grey-peas/

Grey peas was stable food in northern europe before the potato made its way into the kitchens. Since then the use of grey peas have been forgotten. To learn how to cook them, I looked them up in a danish cookbook from 1847 written by Madam Mangor. You might be able to translate it with BabelFish or Google. (http://da.wikisource.org/wiki/Mangors_Kogebog_for_smaa_huusholdninger/Supper#Graae_.C3.86rter)
But an anarchist live somewhere inside of me, always making me do things a bit different to the recipe.

Grey peas in their own gravy

I soaked the grey peas overnight well covered in tapwater. Changed the water, brougth to boil and added a pinch of baking soda, then gently boiled for two hours. Now the grey peas was tender and had developed their own gravy. We dined on some of it. Next day the gravy had turned in to jelly, but melted quickly on boiling. They tasted even better the second day. Taste was superior to the yellow peas, and to my surprise with no gas problems.
I hope grey peas will one day be awailable in the ordinary supermarkets – ithey are delicious.

PS. Thanks to Poul, who saved ‘Lollandske rosiner’ from extinction, and to Kirsten, who grew and presented this batch of grey peas to me.

Tracy West wrote:Does anyone else can their beans?

I gave about 25 pounds of dried beans to a friend. She brought some of them back to me cooked and sealed into one quart tin-cans. I love them!

Yesterday I read that canned pulses produce fewer bottom burps than those cooked from dry.  

Considering the author also advocates not soaking the beans, I wonder if that's why she thought this was so.  

But an interesting idea... do canned beans produce less gas for you than ones you cooked from dry?  

r ranson wrote:bottom burps

Lol, excellent.